Travels in Alaska 



obtained a single glimpse of the great glacier. A Sum 

 Dum seal-hunter, whom we met groping his way 

 deftly through the ice in a very small, unsplitable 

 cottonwood canoe, told us that the ice-mountain was 

 yet fifteen miles away. This was toward the middle 

 of the afternoon, and I gave up sketching and making 

 notes and worked hard with the Indians to reach it 

 before dark. About seven o'clock we approached 

 what seemed to be the extreme head of the fiord, and 

 still no great glacier in sight only a small one, 

 three or four miles long, melting a thousand feet above 

 the sea. Presently, a narrow side opening appeared 

 between tremendous cliffs sheer to a height of four 

 thousand feet or more, trending nearly at right 

 angles to the general trend of the fiord, and appar- 

 ently terminated by a cliff, scarcely less abrupt or 

 high, at a distance of a mile or two. Up this bend we 

 toiled against wind and tide, creeping closely along 

 the wall on the right side, which, as we looked up- 

 ward, seemed to be leaning over, while the waves 

 beating against the bergs and rocks made a discour- 

 aging kind of music. At length, toward nine o'clock, 

 just before the gray darkness of evening fell, a long, 

 triumphant shout told that the glacier, so deeply and 

 desperately hidden, was at last hunted back to its 

 benmost bore. A short distance around a second 

 bend in the canon, I reached a point where I ob- 

 tained a good view of it as it pours its deep, broad 

 flood into the fiord in a majestic course from between 

 the noble mountains, its tributaries, each of which 

 would be regarded elsewhere as a grand glacier, con- 



[ 228 ] 



