The Discovery of Glacier Bay 



from here, I found the surface crevassed and sunken 

 in steps, like the Hugh Miller Glacier, as if it were 

 being undermined by the action of tide-waters. For a 

 distance of fifteen or twenty miles the river-like ice- 

 flood is nearly level, and when it recedes, the ocean 

 water will follow it, and thus form a long extension of 

 the fiord, with features essentially the same as those 

 now extending into the continent farther south, where 

 many great glaciers once poured into the sea, though 

 scarce a vestige of them now exists. Thus the domain 

 of the sea has been, and is being, extended in these 

 ice-sculptured lands, and the scenery of their shores 

 enriched. The brow of the dividing rock is about a 

 thousand feet high, and is hard beset by the glacier. 

 A short time ago it was at least two thousand feet be- 

 low the surface of the over-sweeping ice; and under 

 present climatic conditions it will soon take its place 

 as a glacier-polished island in the middle of the fiord, 

 like a thousand others in the magnificent archipelago. 

 Emerging from its icy sepulchre, it gives a most tell- 

 ing illustration of the birth of a marked feature of a 

 landscape. In this instance it is not the mountain, 

 but the glacier, that is in labor, and the mountain it- 

 self is being brought forth. 



The Hoona Glacier enters the fiord on the south 

 side, a short distance below the Pacific, displaying a 

 broad and far-reaching expanse, over which many 

 lofty peaks are seen; but the front wall, thrust into 

 the fiord, is not nearly so interesting as that of the 

 Pacific, and I did not observe any bergs discharged 

 from it. 



