CHAPTER XIX 



AURORAS 



A FEW days later I set out with Professor Reid's 

 party to visit some of the other large glaciers 

 that flow into the bay, to observe what changes have 

 taken place in them since October, 1879, when I 

 first visited and sketched them. We found the upper 

 half of the bay closely choked with bergs, through 

 which it was exceedingly difficult to force a way. 

 After slowly struggling a few miles up the east side, 

 we dragged the whale-boat and canoe over rough 

 rocks into a fine garden and comfortably camped for 

 the night. 



The next day was spent in cautiously picking a way 

 across to the west side of the bay; and as the strangely 

 scanty stock of provisions was already about done, 

 and the ice-jam to the northward seemed impenetra- 

 ble, the party decided to return to the main camp by 

 a comparatively open, roundabout way to the south- 

 ward, while with the canoe and a handful of food- 

 scraps I pushed on northward. After a hard, anxious 

 struggle, I reached the mouth of the Hugh Miller 

 fiord about sundown, and tried to find a camp-spot 

 on its steep, boulder-bound shore. But no landing- 

 place where it seemed possible to drag the canoe 

 above high-tide mark was discovered after examining 

 a mile or more of this dreary, forbidding barrier, and 

 as night was closing down, I decided to try to grope 

 my way across the mouth of the fiord in the starlight 



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