I Crossed Its Front A Little
Below Its Confluence, Where Its Shattered Current, About Two Or Three
Miles Wide, Is Reunited, And Many Rills And Good-Sized Brooks Glide
Gurgling And Ringing In Pure Blue Channels, Giving Delightful
Animation To The Icy Solitude.
Most of the ice-surface crossed to-day has been very uneven, and
hauling the sled and finding a
Way over hummocks has been fatiguing.
At times I had to lift the sled bodily and to cross many narrow,
nerve-trying, ice-sliver bridges, balancing astride of them, and
cautiously shoving the sled ahead of me with tremendous chasms on
either side. I had made perhaps not more than six or eight miles in
a straight line by six o'clock this evening when I reached ice so
hummocky and tedious I concluded to camp and not try to take the sled
any farther. I intend to leave it here in the middle of the basin and
carry my sleeping-bag and provisions the rest of the way across to
the west side. I am cozy and comfortable here resting in the midst of
glorious icy scenery, though very tired. I made out to get a cup of
tea by means of a few shavings and splinters whittled from the bottom
board of my sled, and made a fire in a little can, a small campfire,
the smallest I ever made or saw, yet it answered well enough as far
as tea was concerned. I crept into my sack before eight o'clock as
the wind was cold and my feet wet. One of my shoes is about worn
out. I may have to put on a wooden sole. This day has been cloudless
throughout, with lovely sunshine, a purple evening and morning. The
circumference of mountains beheld from the midst of this world of
ice is marvelous, the vast plain reposing in such soft tender light,
the fountain mountains so clearly cut, holding themselves aloft with
their loads of ice in supreme strength and beauty of architecture. I
found a skull and most of the other bones of a goat on the glacier
about two miles from the nearest land. It had probably been chased
out of its mountain home by wolves and devoured here. I carried its
horns with me. I saw many considerable depressions in the glacial
surface, also a pitlike hole, irregular, not like the ordinary wells
along the slope of the many small dirt-clad hillocks, faced to the
south. Now the sun is down and the sky is saffron yellow, blending
and fading into purple around to the south and north. It is a
curious experience to be lying in bed writing these notes, hummock
waves rising in every direction, their edges marking a multitude
of crevasses and pits, while all around the horizon rise peaks
innumerable of most intricate style of architecture. Solemnly
growling and grinding moulins contrast with the sweet low-voiced
whispering and warbling of a network of rills, singing like
water-ouzels, glinting, gliding with indescribable softness and
sweetness of voice. They are all around, one within a few feet of
my hard sled bed.
July 17. Another glorious cloudless day is dawning in yellow and
purple and soon the sun over the eastern peak will blot out the blue
peak shadows and make all the vast white ice prairie sparkle. I slept
well last night in the middle of the icy sea. The wind was cold but
my sleeping-bag enabled me to lie neither warm nor intolerably cold.
My three-months cough is gone. Strange that with such work and
exposure one should know nothing of sore throats and of what are
called colds. My heavy, thick-soled shoes, resoled just before
starting on the trip six days ago, are about worn out and my feet
have been wet every night. But no harm comes of it, nothing but good.
I succeeded in getting a warm breakfast in bed. I reached over the
edge of my sled, got hold of a small cedar stick that I had been
carrying, whittled a lot of thin shavings from it, stored them on my
breast, then set fire to a piece of paper in a shallow tin can, added
a pinch of shavings, held the cup of water that always stood at my
bedside over the tiny blaze with one hand, and fed the fire by adding
little pinches of shavings until the water boiled, then pulling
my bread sack within reach, made a good warm breakfast, cooked and
eaten in bed. Thus refreshed, I surveyed the wilderness of crevassed,
hummocky ice and concluded to try to drag my little sled a mile or
two farther, then, finding encouragement, persevered, getting it
across innumerable crevasses and streams and around several lakes and
over and through the midst of hummocks, and at length reached the
western shore between five and six o'clock this evening, extremely
fatigued. This I consider a hard job well done, crossing so wildly
broken a glacier, fifteen miles of it from Snow Dome Mountain, in
two days with a sled weighing altogether not less than a hundred
pounds. I found innumerable crevasses, some of them brimful of water.
I crossed in most places just where the ice was close pressed and
welded after descending cascades and was being shoved over an upward
slope, thus closing the crevasses at the bottom, leaving only the
upper sun-melted beveled portion open for water to collect in.
Vast must be the drainage from this great basin. The waste in
sunshine must be enormous, while in dark weather rains and winds also
melt the ice and add to the volume produced by the rain itself. The
winds also, though in temperature they may be only a degree or two
above freezing-point, dissolve the ice as fast, or perhaps faster,
than clear sunshine. Much of the water caught in tight crevasses
doubtless freezes during the winter and gives rise to many of the
irregular veins seen in the structure of the glacier.
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