THE MUSEUM. 



75 



of the stream's course are irregular, 

 sharply bending from side to side, as 

 any one may see who looks down from 

 a height on the course of a river 

 flowing through the valley. The cur- 

 ves of an ice river, on the other hand, 

 are slow and sinuous, and the mass 

 changes its direction very gradually. 



It was about noon when the ship 

 entered the Muir Inlet, and steamed 

 along toward the great glacier at its 

 head. Icebergs soon began to appear; 

 at first small, later much larger. Some 

 were pure white, others dirty; others 

 white above where they were partially 

 melted, and beneath a beautiful blue. 

 The light falling through the ice gives 

 this color, and it is reflected back from 

 the water in the purest, most delicate 

 sea green. 



The Muir Glacier, which we were 

 now approaching, is rapidly receding. 

 Twenty years ago its front stood two 

 miles further down the bay than now, 

 so that to-day ships sail up over nearly 

 two miles of water, which was former- 

 ly occupied by the ice. The front of 

 the tremendous glacier, which was the 

 first that we had seen near at hand, is 

 two miles wide and perhaps 200 feet 

 in height. From its face great bergs 

 break off at frequent intervals, and fall 

 with a tremendous roar into the water 

 below. They are deeply submerged, 

 spring out of the water again, so as al- 

 most to clear it. go down again, and 

 so rise and fall many times, and at 

 last, after reeling and bobbing about 

 on the surface find a point of equili- 

 brium and slowly float away, to travel 

 back and forth with wind and tide un- 

 til they melt. As the water melts 

 them below faster than air and sun .lo 

 above, they are dangerous to approach 

 in a small boat, since one can never 

 tell when they will turn over and split 

 in two. As they grow small first be- 

 neath the water there is often consid- 

 erable overhanging ice, which gives 

 some indication of their age. The 

 turning over of one of these bergs agi- 

 tates the water, producing waves which 

 may cause other bergs in the neighbor- 



hood to upset. 



While the party were near the Muir 

 Glacier an immense mass fell from its 

 place, representing perhaps one-quarter 

 the width of the glacier — that is to say, 

 it was a mass of ice half a mile wide 

 and from 200 to 250 feet in height 

 above the water. How thick it may 

 have been no one can tell. When 

 this fell the wave caused was tremend- 

 ous, and obliged members of the party 

 who were on the beach to run to high- 

 er ground to escape being washed 

 away. As the mass fell it split into 

 three great pieces, one of which floated 

 off, the other two remaining grounded. 

 One of these masses sprang back out of 

 the water, nearly or quite to the height 

 of the glacier. The roar of the fall 

 was appalling. 



One day two of the party were close 

 to the glacier in a canoe when a great 

 mass of ice, coming apparently from 

 under the glacier, shot up out of the 

 water and raised a wave which nearly 

 filled the canoe and ruined all their 

 photographic plates. If they had not 

 been expert canoemen the two men 

 would very likely have been upset and 

 drowned, for in this ice cold water a 

 man would not long survive. This 

 mass of ice was so close to them that 

 fragments of the berg fell all about 

 them, and any one of these, if it had 

 struck the canoe, would have wrecked 

 it. The experience was one of great 

 danger. 



From the midst of the Muir Glacier 

 rises a huge nunatak or mountain of 

 rock, a real island in the sea of ice. 

 Many years ago, it is said, that only 

 the point of this mountain was to be 

 seen above the surface of the glacier, 

 but now it is nearly 700 feet above the 

 ice; in other words, the glacier was 

 then 500 feet thicker than now, and its 

 slope of course much more steep. 



At various points on this glacier are 

 found curious cones of ice, each cap- 

 ped by a number of hard quartz peb- 

 bles, spherical, or nearly so, and so 

 smooth that they sometimes seem pol- 

 ished. Such pebbles have been ground 



