^Travels in Alaska 



with deep reentering angles and craggy hollows with 

 plain bastions, while the top is roughened with in- 

 numerable spires and pyramids and sharp hacked 

 blades leaning and toppling or cutting straight into 

 the sky. 



The number of bergs given off varies somewhat 

 with the weather and the tides, the average being 

 about one every five or six minutes, counting only 

 those that roar loud enough to make themselves heard 

 at a distance of two or three miles. The very largest, 

 however, may under favorable conditions be heard 

 ten miles or even farther. When a large mass sinks 

 from the upper fissured portion of the wall, there is 

 first a keen, prolonged, thundering roar, which slowly 

 subsides into a low muttering growl, followed by 

 numerous smaller grating clashing sounds from the 

 agitated bergs that dance in the waves about the 

 newcomer as if in welcome; and these again are fol- 

 lowed by the swash and roar of the waves that are 

 raised and hurled up the beach against the mo- 

 raines. But the largest and most beautiful of the 

 bergs, instead of thus falling from the upper weath- 

 ered portion of the wall, rise from the submerged 

 portion with a still grander commotion, springing with 

 tremendous voice and gestures nearly to the top of the 

 wall, tons of water streaming like hair down their 

 sides, plunging and rising again and again before they 

 finally settle in perfect poise, free at last, after having 

 formed part of the slow-crawling glacier for centuries. 

 And as we contemplate their history, as they sail 

 calmly away down the fiord to the sea, how wonderful 



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