Sum Dum Bay 



to bay among the rocks, where they were easily 

 approached and killed. 



The upper half of the fiord is about from a mile to a 

 mile and a half wide, and shut in by sublime Yosemite 

 cliffs, nobly sculptured, and adorned with waterfalls 

 and fringes of trees, bushes, and patches of flowers; 

 but amid so crowded a display of novel beauty it was 

 not easy to concentrate the attention long enough on 

 any portion of it without giving more days and years 

 than our lives could afford. I was determined to see 

 at least the grand fountain of all this ice. As we 

 passed headland after headland, hoping as each was 

 rounded we should obtain a view of it, it still re- 

 mained hidden. 



''Ice-mountain hi yu kumtux hide," glaciers 

 know how to hide extremely well, said Tyeen, as he 

 rested for a moment after rounding a huge granite 

 shoulder of the wall whence we expected to gain a 

 view of the extreme head of the fiord. The bergs, 

 however, were less closely packed and we made good 

 progress, and at half-past eight o'clock, fourteen and 

 a half hours after setting out, the great glacier came 

 in sight at the head of a branch of the fiord that comes 

 in from the northeast. 



The discharging front of this fertile, fast-flowing 

 glacier is about three quarters of a mile wide, and 

 probably eight or nine hundred feet deep, about one 

 hundred and fifty feet of its depth rising above the 

 water as a grand blue barrier wall. It is much wider a 

 few miles farther back, the front being jammed be- 

 tween sheer granite walls from thirty-five hundred to 



[ 217] 



