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wide facade of the great Muir glacier, lifting its blue wall of ice 
two hundred feet above the bay. Here we were in the very 
workshop of Nature, and world-building was in active process 
with the wonderful implement that the glacier has proved to be 
still working its will upon the plastic earth. 
Glacier Bay is thirty miles long, and hundreds of acres of ice 
from a dozen glaciers are pushing relentlessly down to the sea 
from such peaks as Crillon and Fairweather, that tower in majes- 
tic whiteness fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand feet above us. 
It is a weird and magnificent scene! The bare, brown shores 
are scoured and scored with recent ice; the blue bay floats ice- 
bergs of curious forms, all rich in coloring, pure white, deep blue 
or green, or shaded and toned with debris, while over beyond 
the peaks of the Fairweather range stand shoulder to shoulder 
in quiet, calm majesty. 
What is this activity we see before us? What is Nature 
about? Have we indeed tracked the glacial period to this point 
in its retreat from the South, or have these mountains arisen 
since then? It is a retreat, surely, for high above our heads, two 
thousand feet up the mountain side, we see the footprints of for- 
mer ice-fields, while the flowers, Epzlobiums and Gentians, are 
waving their gay pennons of triumphant advance wherever the 
moraine gives them vantage ground. Is not this the place t 
study the floral repeopling of the Northern areas? 
Dr. Russell, in his account of the expedition to Mt. St. Elias, 
speaks of Blossom Island, surrounded by perpetual snow, yet pro 
ducing spruces, ferns, hellebore, gentians, orchids and berty~ 
bushes. Who will tell us how these adventurers came there? 
What means of dissemination or strength of constitution have 
they that gives them the advantage ? 
Another question meets us: if, indeed, our temperate floras 
are on the march, in what order have the exiled plants followed 
the glaciers? Is it mere hardiness of constitution or better means 
of dissemination that bring the birch and alder close up t0 the 
Northern tree-line? Is the oak as sure to follow, but by easief 
stages, as befits its dignity ? 
, ere not many indications of change undef ou 
