From T*aku River to ^Taylor Bay 



that show the vanishing condition of the tribe at a 

 glance. 



Our Indians wanted to camp for the night in one 

 of the deserted houses, but I urged them on into the 

 clean wilderness until dark, when we landed on a 

 rocky beach fringed with devil's-clubs, greatly to the 

 disgust of our crew. We had to make the best of it, 

 however, as it was too dark to seek farther. After 

 supper was accomplished among the boulders, they 

 retired to the canoe, which they anchored a little way 

 out, beyond low tide, while Mr. Young and I at the 

 expense of a good deal of scrambling and panax sting- 

 ing, discovered a spot on which we managed to sleep. 



The next morning, about two hours after leaving 

 our thorny camp, we rounded a great mountain rock 

 nearly a mile in height and entered the Taku fiord. 

 It is about eighteen miles long and from three to five 

 miles wide, and extends directly back into the heart 

 of the mountains, draining hundreds of glaciers and 

 streams. The ancient glacier that formed it was far 

 too deep and broad and too little concentrated to 

 erode one of those narrow canons, usually so im- 

 pressive in sculpture and architecture, but it is all the 

 more interesting on this account when the grandeur 

 of the ice work accomplished is recognized. This fiord, 

 more than any other I have examined, explains the 

 formation of the wonderful system of channels ex- 

 tending along the coast from Puget Sound to about 

 latitude 59 degrees, for it is a marked portion of the 

 system,-- a branch of Stephens Passage. Its trends 

 and general sculpture are as distinctly glacial as those 



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