Travels in Alaska 



these water-streams were riding on the parent ice- 

 stream, their voices joined in one grand anthem tell- 

 ing the wonders of their near and far-off fountains. 

 The lake itself is resting in a basin of ice, and the for- 

 ested moraine, though seemingly cut off from the 

 glacier and probably more than a century old, is in 

 great part resting on buried ice left behind as the 

 glacier receded, and melting slowly on account of 

 the protection afforded by the moraine detritus, 

 which keeps shifting and falling on the inner face long 

 after it is overgrown with lichens, mosses, grasses, 

 bushes, and even good-sized trees ; these changes going 

 on with marvelous deliberation until in fullness of 

 time the whole moraine settles down upon its bed- 

 rock foundation. 



The outlet of the lake is a large stream, almost a 

 river in size, one of the main draining streams of the 

 glacier. I attempted to ford it where it begins to 

 break in rapids in passing over the moraine, but 

 found it too deep and rough on the bottom. 1 then 

 tried to ford at its head, where it is wider and glides 

 smoothly out of the lake, bracing myself against the 

 current with a pole, but found it too deep, and when 

 the icy water reached my shoulders I cautiously 

 struggled back to the moraine. I next followed it 

 down through the rocky jungle to a place where in 

 breaking across the moraine dam it was only about 

 thirty-five feet wide. Here I found a spruce tree, 

 which I felled for a bridge; it reached across, about 

 ten feet of the top holding in the bank brush. But the 

 force of the torrent, acting on the submerged branches 



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