Travels in Alaska 



I greatly enjoyed my walk up this majestic ice- 

 river, charmed by the pale-blue, ineffably fine light in 

 the crevasses, moulins, and wells, and the innumer- 

 able azure pools in basins of azure ice, and the net- 

 work of surface streams, large and small, gliding, 

 swirling with wonderful grace of motion in their 

 frictionless channels, calling forth devout admiration 

 at almost every step and filling the mind with a sense 

 of Nature's endless beauty and power. Looking ahead 

 from the middle of the glacier, you see the broad 

 white flood, though apparently rigid as iron, sweep- 

 ing in graceful curves between its high mountain-like 

 walls, small glaciers hanging in the hollows on either 

 side, and snow in every form above them, and the 

 great down-plunging granite buttresses and head- 

 lands of the walls marvelous in bold massive sculpture ; 

 forests in side canons to within fifty feet of the glacier; 

 avalanche pathways overgrown with alder and wil- 

 low; innumerable cascades keeping up a solemn har- 

 mony of water sounds blending with those of the 

 glacier moulins and rills; and as far as the eye can 

 reach, tributary glaciers at short intervals silently 

 descending from their high, white fountains to swell 

 the grand central ice-river. 



In the angle formed by the main glacier and the 

 lake that gives rise to the river floods, there is a mas- 

 sive granite dome sparsely feathered with trees, and 

 just beyond this yosemitic rock is a mountain, per- 

 haps ten thousand feet high, laden with ice and snow 

 which seemed pure pearly white in the morning light. 

 Last evening as seen from camp it was adorned with a 



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