Fiat Allis 65B Motor Grader Service

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its battlements and peaks and columns, until the whole majestic
landscape was revealed.
Now we saw the design and purpose of it all. Now the text of this
great sermon was emblazoned across the landscape—"God is Love";
and we understood that these relentless forces that had pushed the
molten mountains heavenward, cooled them into granite peaks,
covered them with snow and ice, dumped the moraine matter into
the sea, filling up the sea, preparing the world for a stronger and
better race of men (who knows?), were all a part of that great "All
things" that "work together for good."
Our minds cleared with the landscape; our courage rose; our
Indians dipped their paddles silently, steering without fear amidst
the dangerous masses of ice. But there was no profanity in Muir's
exclamation, "We have met with God!" A lifelong devoutness of
gratitude filled us, to think that we were guided into this most
wonderful room of God's great gallery, on perhaps the only day in
the year when the skies were cleared and the sunrise, the
atmospheric conditions and the point of view all prepared for the
matchless spectacle. The discomforts of the voyage, the toil, the
cold and rain of the past weeks were a small price to pay for one
glimpse of its surpassing loveliness. Again and again Muir would
break out, after a long silence of blissful memory, with exclamations:
"We saw it; we saw it! He sent us to His most glorious exhibition.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"
Two or three inspiring days followed. Muir must climb the most
accessible of the mountains. My weak shoulders forbade me to
ascend more than two or three thousand feet, but Muir went more
than twice as high. Upon two or three of the glaciers he climbed,
although the speed of these icy streams was so great and their
"frozen cataracts" were so frequent, that it was difficult to ascend
them.
I began to understand Muir's whole new theory, which theory
made Tyndall pronounce him the greatest authority on glacial action
the world had seen. He pointed out to me the mechanical laws that
governed those slow-moving, resistless streams; how they carved
their own valleys; how the lower valley and glacier were often the
resultant in size and velocity of the two or three glaciers that now
formed the branches of the main glaciers; how the harder strata of
rock resisted and turned the masses of ice; how the steely
ploughshares were often inserted into softer leads and a whole
mountain split apart as by a wedge.
Muir would explore all day long, often rising hours before daylight
and disappearing among the mountains, not coming to camp until
after night had fallen. Again and again the Indians said that he was
lost; but I had no fears for him. When he would return to camp he
was so full of his discoveries and of the new facts garnered that he
would talk until long into the night, almost forgetting to eat.
Returning down the bay, we passed the largest glacier of all,
which was to bear Muir's name. It was then fully a mile and a half in
width, and the perpendicular face of it towered from four to seven
hundred feet above the surface of the water. The ice masses were
breaking off so fast that we were forced to put off far from the face
of the glacier. The great waves threatened constantly to dash us
against the sharp points of the icebergs. We wished to land and
scale the glacier from the eastern side. We rowed our canoe about
half a mile from the edge of the glacier, but, attempting to land,
were forced hastily to put off again. A great wave, formed by the
masses of ice breaking off into the water, threatened to dash our
loaded canoe against the boulders on the beach. Rowing further
away, we tried it again and again, with the same result. As soon as
we neared the shore another huge wave would threaten destruction.
We were fully a mile and a half from the edge of the glacier before
we found it safe to land.
 MUIR GLACIER
Returning down Glacier Bay, we visited the largest glacier
of all, which was to bear Muir's name
Muir spent a whole day alone on the glacier, walking over twenty
miles across what he called the glacial lake between two mountains.
A cold, penetrating, mist-like rain was falling, and dark clouds swept
up the bay and clung about the shoulders of the mountains. When
night approached and Muir had not returned, I set the Indians to
digging out from the bases of the gravel hills the frazzled stumps
and logs that remained of the buried forests. These were full of resin
and burned brightly. I made a great fire and cooked a good supper
of venison, beans, biscuit and coffee. When pitchy darkness
gathered, and still Muir did not come, Tow-a-att made some torches
of fat spruce, and taking with him Charley, laden with more wood,
he went up the beach a mile and a half, climbed the base of the
mountain and kindled a beacon which flashed its cheering rays far
over the glacier.
Muir came stumbling into camp with these two Indians a little
before midnight, very tired but very happy. "Ah!" he sighed, "I'm
glad to be in camp. The glacier almost got me this time. If it had not
been for the beacon and old Tow-a-att, I might have had to spend
the night on the ice. The crevasses were so many and so
bewildering in their mazy, crisscross windings that I was actually
going farther into the glacier when I caught the flash of light."
I brought him to the tent and placed the hot viands before him.
He attacked them ravenously, but presently was talking again:
"Man, man; you ought to have been with me. You'll never make
up what you have lost to-day. I've been wandering through a
thousand rooms of God's crystal temple. I've been a thousand feet
down in the crevasses, with matchless domes and sculptured figures
and carved ice-work all about me. Solomon's marble and ivory
palaces were nothing to it. Such purity, such color, such delicate
beauty! I was tempted to stay there and feast my soul, and softly
freeze, until I would become part of the glacier. What a great death
that would be!"
Again and again I would have to remind Muir that he was eating
his supper, but it was more than an hour before I could get him to
finish the meal, and two or three hours longer before he stopped
talking and went to sleep. I wish I had taken down his descriptions.
What splendid reading they would make!
But scurries of snow warned us that winter was coming, and,
much to the relief of our natives, we turned the prow of our canoe
towards Chatham Strait again. Landing our Hoonah guide at his
village, we took our route northward again up Lynn Canal. The
beautiful Davison Glacier with its great snowy fan drew our gaze and
excited our admiration for two days; then the visit to the Chilcats
and the return trip commenced. Bowling down the canal before a
strong north wind, we entered Stevens Passage, and visited the two
villages of the Auk Indians, a squalid, miserable tribe. We camped at
the site of what is now Juneau, the capital of Alaska, and no dream
of the millions of gold that were to be taken from those mountains
disturbed us. If we had known, I do not think that we would have
halted a day or staked a claim. Our treasures were richer than gold
and securely laid up in the vaults of our memories.
 An excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier Bay, with its
then three living glaciers; a visit to two villages of the Taku Indians;
past Ft. Snettisham, up whose arms we pushed, mapping them;
then to Sumdum. Here the two arms of Holkham Bay, filled with ice,
enticed us to exploration, but the constant rains of the fall had made
the ice of the glaciers more viscid and the glacier streams more
rapid; hence the vast array of icebergs charging down upon us like
an army, spreading out in loose formation and then gathering into a
barrier when the tide turned, made exploration to the end of the bay
impossible. Muir would not give up his quest of the mother glacier
until the Indians frankly refused to go any further; and old Tow-a-att
called our interpreter, Johnny, as for a counsel of state, and carefully
set forth to Muir that if he persisted in his purpose of pushing
forward up the bay he would have the blood of the whole party on
his hands.
Said the old chief: "My life is of no account, and it does not matter
whether I live or die; but you shall not sacrifice the life of my
minister."
I laughed at Muir's discomfiture and gave the word to retreat. This
one defeat of a victorious expedition so weighed upon Muir's mind
that it brought him back from the California coast next year and
from the arms of his bride to discover and climb upon that glacier.
On down now through Prince Frederick Sound, past the beautiful
Norris Glacier, then into Le Conte Bay with its living glacier and
icebergs, across the Stickeen flats, and so joyfully home again, Muir
to take the November steamboat back to his sunland.
I have made many voyages in that great Alexandrian Archipelago
since, traveling by canoe over fifteen thousand miles—not one of
them a dull one—through its intricate passages; but none compared,
in the number and intensity of its thrills, in the variety and
excitement of its incidents and in its lasting impressions of beauty
and grandeur, with this first voyage when we groped our way
northward with only Vancouver's old chart as our guide.
TH E LOST G LACIER
NIGHT IN A CANOE
A dreary world! The constant rain
Beats back to earth blithe fancy's
wings;
And life—a sodden garment—clings
About a body numb with pain.

Imagination ceased with light;

Of Nature's psalm no echo lingers.
The death-cold mist, with ghostly
fingers,
Shrouds world and soul in rayless night.

An inky sea, a sullen crew,

A frail canoe's uncertain motion;
A whispered talk of wind and ocean,
As plotting secret crimes to do!

The vampire-night sucks all my blood;

Warm home and love seem lost for
aye;
From cloud to cloud I steal away,
Like guilty soul o'er Stygian flood.

Peace, morbid heart! From paddle blade

See the black water flash in light;
And bars of moonbeams streaming
white,
Have pearls of ebon raindrops made.

From darkest sea of deep despair

Gleams Hope, awaked by Action's
blow;
And Faith's clear ray, though clouds
hang low,
Slants up to heights serene and fair.
 V
THE LOST GLACIER

J
OHN MUIR was married in the spring of 1880 to Miss Strentzel,
the daughter of a Polish physician who had come out in the great
stampede of 1849 to California, but had found his gold in
oranges, lemons and apricots on a great fruit ranch at Martinez,
California. A brief letter from Muir told of his marriage, with just one
note in it, the depth of joy and peace of which I could fathom,
knowing him so well. Then no word of him until the monthly
mailboat came in September. As I stood on the wharf with the rest
of the Wrangell population, as was the custom of our isolation,
watching the boat come in, I was overjoyed to see John Muir on
deck, in that same old, long, gray ulster and Scotch cap. He waved
and shouted at me before the boat touched the wharf.
Springing ashore he said, "When can you be ready?"
"Aren't you a little fast?" I replied. "What does this mean? Where's
your wife?"
"Man," he exclaimed, "have you forgotten? Don't you know we lost
a glacier last fall? Do you think I could sleep soundly in my bed this
winter with that hanging on my conscience? My wife could not
come, so I have come alone and you've got to go with me to find
the lost. Get your canoe and crew and let us be off."
The ten months since Muir had left me had not been spent in
idleness at Wrangell. I had made two long voyages of discovery and
missionary work on my own account,—one in the spring, of four
hundred fifty miles around Prince of Wales Island, visiting the five
towns of Hydah Indians and the three villages of the Hanega tribe of
Thlingets. Another in the summer down the coast to the Cape Fox
and Tongass tribes of Thlingets, and across Dixon entrance to Ft.
Simpson, where there was a mission among the Tsimpheans, and on
fifteen miles further to the famous mission of Father Duncan at
Metlakahtla. I had written accounts of these trips to Muir; but for
him the greatest interest was in the glaciers and mountains of the
mainland.
Our preparations were soon made. Alas! we could not have our
noble old captain, Tow-a-att, this time. On the tenth of January,
1880,—the darkest day of my life,—this "noblest Roman of them all"
fell dead at my feet with a bullet through his forehead, shot by a
member of that same Hootz-noo tribe where he had preached the
gospel of peace so simply and eloquently a few months before. The
Hootz-noos, maddened by the fiery liquor that bore their name,
came to Wrangell, and a preliminary skirmish led to an attack at
daylight of that winter day upon the Stickeen village. Old Tow-a-att
had stood for peace, and rather than have any bloodshed had
offered all his blankets as a peace offering, although in no physical
fear himself; but when the Hootz-noos, encouraged by the seeming
cowardice of the Stickeens, broke into their houses, and the
Christianized tribe, provoked beyond endurance, came out with their
guns, Tow-a-att came forth armed only with his old carved spear, the
emblem of his position as chief, to see if he could not call his tribe
back again. At my instance, as I stood with my hand on his shoulder,
he lifted up his voice to recall his people to their houses, when, in an
instant, the volley commenced on both sides, and this Christian man,
one of the simplest and grandest souls I ever knew, fell dead at my
feet, and the tribe was tumbled back into barbarism; and the white
man, who had taught the Indians the art of making rum, and the
white man's government, which had afforded no safeguard against
such scenes, were responsible.
 DAVIDSON GLACIER
The beautiful Davidson Glacier, with its great snow-white
fan, drew our gaze and excited our admiration for two days
Muir mourned with me the fate of this old chief; but another of my
men, Lot Tyeen, was ready with a swift canoe. Joe, his son-in-law,
and Billy Dickinson, a half-breed boy of seventeen who acted as
interpreter, formed the crew. When we were about to embark I
suddenly thought of my little dog Stickeen and made the resolve to
take him along. My wife and Muir both protested and I almost
yielded to their persuasion. I shudder now to think what the world
would have lost had their arguments prevailed! That little, long-
haired, brisk, beautiful, but very independent dog, in co-ordination
with Muir's genius, was to give to the world one of its greatest dog-
classics. Muir's story of "Stickeen" ranks with "Rab and His Friends,"
"Bob, Son of Battle," and far above "The Call of the Wild." Indeed, in
subtle analysis of dog character, as well as beauty of description, I
think it outranks all of them. All over the world men, women and
children are reading with laughter, thrills and tears this exquisite little
story.
 I have told Muir that in his book he did not do justice to my
puppy's beauty. I think that he was the handsomest dog I have ever
known. His markings were very much like those of an American
Shepherd dog—black, white and tan; although he was not half the
size of one; but his hair was so silky and so long, his tail so heavily
fringed and beautifully curved, his eyes so deep and expressive and
his shape so perfect in its graceful contours, that I have never seen
another dog quite like him; otherwise Muir's description of him is
perfect.
When Stickeen was only a round ball of silky fur as big as one's
fist, he was given as a wedding present to my bride, two years
before this voyage. I carried him in my overcoat pocket to and from
the steamer as we sailed from Sitka to Wrangell. Soon after we
arrived a solemn delegation of Stickeen Indians came to call on the
bride; but as soon as they saw the puppy they were solemn no
longer. His gravely humorous antics were irresistible. It was Moses
who named him Stickeen after their tribe—an exceptional honor.
Thereafter the whole tribe adopted and protected him, and woe to
the Indian dog which molested him. Once when I was passing the
house of this same Lot Tyeen, one of his large hunting dogs dashed
out at Stickeen and began to worry him. Lot rescued the little fellow,
delivered him to me and walked into his house. Soon he came out
with his gun, and before I knew what he was about he had shot the
offending Indian dog—a valuable hunting animal.
Stickeen lacked the obtrusively affectionate manner of many of his
species, did not like to be fussed over, would even growl when our
babies enmeshed their hands in his long hair; and yet, to a degree I
have never known in another dog, he attracted the attention of
everybody and won all hearts.
As instances: Dr. Kendall, "The Grand Old Man" of our Church,
during his visit of 1879 used to break away from solemn counsels
with the other D.D.s and the carpenters to run after and shout at
Stickeen. And Mrs. McFarland, the Mother of Protestant missions in
Alaska, often begged us to give her the dog; and, when later he was
stolen from her care by an unscrupulous tourist and so forever lost
to us, she could hardly afterwards speak of him without tears.
Stickeen was a born aristocrat, dainty and scrupulously clean.
From puppyhood he never cared to play with the Indian dogs, and I
was often amused to see the dignified but decided way in which he
repulsed all attempts at familiarity on the part of the Indian children.
He admitted to his friendship only a few of the natives, choosing
those who had adopted the white man's dress and mode of living,
and were devoid of the rank native odors. His likes and dislikes were
very strong and always evident from the moment of his meeting
with a stranger. There was something almost uncanny about the
accuracy of his judgment when "sizing up" a man.
It was Stickeen himself who really decided the question whether
we should take him with us on this trip. He listened to the
discussion, pro and con, as he stood with me on the wharf, turning
his sharp, expressive eyes and sensitive ears up to me or down to
Muir in the canoe. When the argument seemed to be going against
the dog he suddenly turned, deliberately walked down the gang-
plank to the canoe, picked his steps carefully to the bow, where my
seat with Muir was arranged, and curled himself down on my coat.
The discussion ended abruptly in a general laugh, and Stickeen went
along.
Then the acute little fellow set about, in the wisest possible way,
to conquer Muir. He was not obtrusive, never "butted in"; never
offended by a too affectionate tongue. He listened silently to
discussions on his merits, those first days; but when Muir's
comparisons of the brilliant dogs of his acquaintance with Stickeen
grew too "odious" Stickeen would rise, yawn openly and retire to a
distance, not slinkingly, but with tail up, and lie down again out of
earshot of such calumnies. When we landed after a day's journey
Stickeen was always the first ashore, exploring for field mice and
squirrels; but when we would start to the woods, the mountains or
the glaciers the dog would join us, coming mysteriously from the
forest. When our paths separated, Stickeen, looking to me for
permission, would follow Muir, trotting at first behind him, but
gradually ranging alongside.
After a few days Muir changed his tone, saying, "There's more in
that wee beastie than I thought"; and before a week passed
Stickeen's victory was complete; he slept at Muir's feet, went with
him on all his rambles; and even among dangerous crevasses or far
up the steep slopes of granite mountains the little dog's splendid tail
would be seen ahead of Muir, waving cheery signals to his new-
found human companion.
Our canoe was light and easily propelled. Our outfit was very
simple, for this was to be a quick voyage and there were not to be
so many missionary visits this time. It was principally a voyage of
discovery; we were in search of the glacier that we had lost. Perched
in the high stern sat our captain, Lot Tyeen, massive and capable,
handling his broad steering paddle with power and skill. In front of
him Joe and Billy pulled oars, Joe, a strong young man, our cook,
hunter and best oarsman; Billy, a lad of seventeen, our interpreter
and Joe's assistant. Towards the bow, just behind the mast, sat Muir
and I, each with a paddle in his hands. Stickeen slumbered at our
feet or gazed into our faces when our conversation interested him.
When we began to discuss a landing place he would climb the high
bow and brace himself on the top of the beak, an animated figure-
head, ready to jump into the water when we were about to camp.
Our route was different from that of '79. Now we struck through
Wrangell Narrows, that tortuous and narrow passage between Mitkof
and Kupreanof Islands, past Norris Glacier with its far-flung shaft of
ice appearing above the forests as if suspended in air; past the bold
Pt. Windham with its bluff of three thousand feet frowning upon the
waters of Prince Frederick Sound; across Port Houghton, whose
deep fiord had no ice in it and, therefore, was not worthy of an
extended visit. We made all haste, for Muir was, as the Indians said,
"always hungry for ice," and this was more especially his expedition.
He was the commander now, as I had been the year before. He had
set for himself the limit of a month and must return by the October
boat. Often we ran until late at night against the protests of our
Indians, whose life of infinite leisure was not accustomed to such
rude interruption. They could not understand Muir at all, nor in the
least comprehend his object in visiting icy bays where there was no
chance of finding gold and nothing to hunt.
The vision rises before me, as my mind harks back to this second
trip of seven hundred miles, of cold, rainy nights, when, urged by
Muir to make one more point, the natives passed the last favorable
camping place and we blindly groped for hours in pitchy darkness,
trying to find a friendly beach. The intensely phosphorescent water
flashed about us, the only relief to the inky blackness of the night.
Occasionally a salmon or a big halibut, disturbed by our canoe, went
streaming like a meteor through the water, throwing off coruscations
of light. As we neared the shore, the waves breaking upon the rocks
furnished us the only illumination. Sometimes their black tops with
waving seaweed, surrounded by phosphorescent breakers, would
have the appearance of mouths set with gleaming teeth rushing at
us out of the dark as if to devour us. Then would come the landing
on a sandy beach, the march through the seaweed up to the wet
woods, a fusillade of exploding fucus pods accompanying us as if the
outraged fairies were bombarding us with tiny guns. Then would
ensue a tedious groping with the lantern for a camping place and for
some dry, fat spruce wood from which to coax a fire; then the big
camp-fire, the bean-pot and coffee-pot, the cheerful song and story,
and the deep, dreamless sleep that only the weary voyageur or
hunter can know.
Four or five days sufficed to bring us to our first objective—
Sumdum or Holkham Bay, with its three wonderful arms. Here we
were to find the lost glacier. This deep fiord has two great prongs.
Neither of them figured in Vancouver's chart, and so far as records
go we were the first to enter and follow to its end the longest of
these, Endicott Arm. We entered the bay at night, caught again by
the darkness, and groped our way uncertainly. We probably would
have spent most of the night trying to find a landing place had not
the gleam of a fire greeted us, flashing through the trees,
disappearing as an island intervened, and again opening up with its
fair ray as we pushed on. An hour's steady paddling brought us to
the camp of some Cassiar miners—my friends. They were here at
the foot of a glacier stream, from the bed of which they had been
sluicing gold. Just now they were in hard luck, as the constant rains
had swelled the glacial stream, burst through their wing-dams,
swept away their sluice-boxes and destroyed the work of the
summer. Strong men of the wilderness as they were, they were not
discouraged, but were discussing plans for prospecting new places
and trying it again here next summer. Hot coffee and fried venison
emphasized their welcome, and we in return could give them a little
news from the outside world, from which they had been shut off
completely for months.
Muir called us before daylight the next morning. He had been up
since two or three o'clock, "studying the night effects," he said,
listening to the roaring and crunching of the charging ice as it came
out of Endicott Arm, spreading out like the skirmish line of an army
and grinding against the rocky point just below us. He had even
attempted a moonlight climb up the sloping face of a high
promontory with Stickeen as his companion, but was unable to get
to the top, owing to the smoothness of the granite rock. It was
newly glaciated—this whole region—and the hard rubbing ice-tools
had polished the granite like a monument. A hasty meal and we
were off.
"We'll find it this time," said Muir.
A miner crawled out of his blankets and came to see us start. "If
it's scenery you're after," he said, "ten miles up the bay there's the
nicest canyon you ever saw. It has no name that I know of, but it is
sure some scenery."
The long, straight fiord stretched southeast into the heart of the
granite range, its funnel shape producing tremendous tides. When
the tide was ebbing that charging phalanx of ice was irresistible,
storming down the canyon with race-horse speed; no canoe could
stem that current. We waited until the turn, then getting inside the
outer fleet of icebergs we paddled up with the flood tide. Mile after
mile we raced past those smooth mountain shoulders; higher and
higher they towered, and the ice, closing in upon us, threatened a
trap. The only way to navigate safely that dangerous fiord was to
keep ahead of the charging ice. As we came up towards the end of
the bay the narrowing walls of the fiord compressed the ice until it
crowded dangerously around us. Our captain, Lot, had taken the
precaution to put a false bow and stern on his canoe, cunningly
fashioned out of curved branches of trees and hollowed with his
hand-adz to fit the ends of the canoe. These were lashed to the bow
and stern by thongs of deer sinew. They were needed. It was like
penetrating an arctic ice-floe. Sometimes we would have to skirt the
granite rock and with our poles shove out the ice-cakes to secure a
passage. It was fully thirty miles to the head of the bay, but we
made it in half a day, so strong was the current of the rising tide.
I shall never forget the view that burst upon us as we rounded the
last point. The face of the glacier where it discharged its icebergs
was very narrow in comparison with the giants of Glacier Bay, but
the ice cliff was higher than even the face of Muir Glacier. The
narrow canyon of hard granite had compressed the ice of the great
glacier until it had the appearance of a frozen torrent broken into
innumerable crevasses, the great masses of ice tumbling over one
another and bulging out for a few moments before they came
crashing and splashing down into the deep water of the bay. The
fiord was simply a cleft in high mountains, and the depth of the
water could only be conjectured. It must have been hundreds of
feet, perhaps thousands, from the surface of the water to the
bottom of that fissure. Smooth, polished, shining breasts of bright
gray granite crowded above the glacier on every side, seeming to
overhang the ice and the bay. Struggling clumps of evergreens clung
to the mountain sides below the glacier, and up, away up, dizzily to
the sky towered the walls of the canyon. Hundreds of other Alaskan
glaciers excel this in masses of ice and in grandeur of front, but
none that I have seen condense beauty and grandeur to finer
results.
"What a plucky little giant!" was Muir's exclamation as we stood
on a rock-mound in front of this glacier. "To think of his shouldering
his way through the mountain range like this! Samson, pushing
down the pillars of the temple at Gaza, was nothing to this fellow.
Hear him roar and laugh!"
Without consulting me Muir named this "Young Glacier," and right
proud was I to see that name on the charts for the next ten years or
more, for we mapped Endicott Arm and the other arm of Sumdum
Bay as we had Glacier Bay; but later maps have a different name.
Some ambitious young ensign on a surveying vessel, perhaps, stole
my glacier, and later charts give it the name of Dawes. I have not
found in the Alaskan statute books any penalty attached to the crime
of stealing a glacier, but certainly it ought to be ranked as a felony of
the first magnitude, the grandest of grand larcenies.
A couple of days and nights spent in the vicinity of Young Glacier
were a period of unmixed pleasure. Muir spent all of these days and
part of the nights climbing the pinnacled mountains to this and that
viewpoint, crossing the deep, narrow and dangerous glacier five
thousand feet above the level of the sea, exploring its tributaries and
their side canyons, making sketches in his note-book for future
elaboration. Stickeen by this time constantly followed Muir, exciting
my jealousy by his plainly expressed preference. Because of my bad
shoulder the higher and steeper ascents of this very rugged region
were impossible to me, and I must content myself with two
thousand feet and even lesser climbs. My favorite perch was on the
summit of a sugar-loaf rock which formed the point of a promontory
jutting into the bay directly in front of my glacier, and distant from
its face less than a quarter of a mile. It was a granite fragment
which had evidently been broken off from the mountain; indeed,
there was a niche five thousand feet above into which it would
exactly fit. The sturdy evergreens struggled half-way up its sides,
but the top was bare.
On this splendid pillar I spent many hours. Generally I could see
Muir, fortunate in having sound arms and legs, scaling the high rock-
faces, now coming out on a jutting spur, now spread like a spider
against the mountain wall. Here he would be botanizing in a patch of
green that relieved the gray of the granite, there he was dodging in
and out of the blue crevasses of the upper glacial falls. Darting
before him or creeping behind was a little black speck which I made
out to be Stickeen, climbing steeps up which a fox would hardly
venture. Occasionally I would see him dancing about at the base of
a cliff too steep for him, up which Muir was climbing, and his
piercing howls of protest at being left behind would come echoing
down to me.
But chiefly I was engrossed in the great drama which was being
acted before me by the glacier itself. It was the battle of gravity with
flinty hardness and strong cohesion. The stage setting was perfect;
the great hall formed by encircling mountains; the side curtains of
dark-green forest, fold on fold; the gray and brown top-curtains of
the mountain heights stretching clear across the glacier, relieved by
vivid moss and flower patches of yellow, magenta, violet and
crimson. But the face of the glacier was so high and rugged and the
ice so pure that it showed a variety of blue and purple tints I have
never seen surpassed—baby-blue, sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise,
cobalt, indigo, peacock, ultra-marine, shading at the top into lilac
and amethyst. The base of the glacier-face, next to the dark-green
water of the bay, resembled a great mass of vitriol, while the top,
where it swept out of the canyon, had the curves and tints and
delicate lines of the iris.
 TAKU GLACIER
There followed an excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature
of Glacier Bay, with its three living glaciers
But the glacier front was not still; in form and color it was
changing every minute. The descent was so steep that the glacial
rapids above the bay must have flowed forward eighty or a hundred
feet a day. The ice cliff, towering a thousand feet over the water,
would present a slight incline from the perpendicular inwards toward
the canyon, the face being white from powdered ice, the result of
the grinding descent of the ice masses. Here and there would be
little cascades of this fine ice spraying out as they fell, with glints of
prismatic colors when the sunlight struck them. As I gazed I could
see the whole upper part of the cliff slowly moving forward until the
ice-face was vertical. Then, foot by foot it would be pushed out until
the upper edge overhung the water. Now the outer part, denuded of
the ice powder, would present a face of delicate blue with darker
shades where the mountain peaks cast their shadows. Suddenly
from top to bottom of the ice cliff two deep lines of prussian blue
appeared. They were crevasses made by the ice current flowing
more rapidly in the center of the stream. Fascinated, I watched this
great pyramid of blue-veined onyx lean forward until it became a