^Travels in Alaska 



cepting the icebergs that is very striking in the 

 scenery as compared with that of the smooth un- 

 encumbered outside channels, where all is so evenly 

 beautiful. The mountain-wall on the right as you 

 go up is more precipitous than usual, and a series of 

 small glaciers is seen along the top of it, extending 

 their blue-crevassed fronts over the rims of pure- 

 white snow fountains, and from the end of each front 

 a hearty stream coming in a succession of falls and 

 rapids over the terminal moraines, through patches of 

 dwarf willows, and then through the spruce woods 

 into the bay, singing and dancing all the way down. 

 On the opposite side of the bay from here there is a 

 small side bay about three miles deep, with a showy 

 group of glacier-bearing mountains back of it. Every- 

 where else the view is bounded by comparatively low 

 mountains densely forested to the very top. 



After sailing about six miles from the mine, the 

 experienced mountaineer could see some evidence of 

 an opening from this wide lower portion, and on reach- 

 ing it, it proved to be the continuation of the main 

 west arm, contracted between stupendous walls of 

 gray granite, and crowded with bergs from shore to 

 shore, which seem to bar the way against everything 

 but wings. Headland after headland, in most impos- 

 ing array, was seen plunging sheer and bare from dizzy 

 heights, and planting its feet in the ice-encumbered 

 water without leaving a spot on which one could land 

 from a boat, while no part of the great glacier that 

 pours all these miles of ice into the fiord was visible. 

 Pushing our way slowly through the packed bergs, 



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