The Days of a Man 1:1897 



syncrasy 



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by way of Skagway or Dyea over the forbidding 

 mountains to Lake Lindeman and Lake Labarge. 

 Of this amazing episode I shall have more to say in 

 connection with my own visit to the Yukon in 1903. 

 The culminating experience of our trip on the 

 Muir ^een was a visit to the incomparable Muir Glacier, i 

 Glacier ^^{x\i its glittering front of solid blue ice a mile or g 

 more across and some 500 feet high. Walking over ^ 

 the surface, we recalled how John Muir had traversed , 

 it with the dog Stickeen, as described in his striking r 

 tale of "A Dog and a Glacier." 



Arrived at Sitka, I hit an unexpected snag. It 

 appeared that Captain John J. Brice, then hold- 

 over Commissioner of Fisheries, had sent per- 

 emptory orders to Captain Moser to receive on the 

 Albatross no one except the commission of 1896. 

 This action was of course intended to bar out my 

 student assistants (who, by the way, served without 

 pay) and to embarrass me as much as possible. 



As a matter of fact, however, there was probably 

 nothing personal about Brice's attitude. Apparently 

 it was only part of his desultory feud with "those 

 Smithsonian fellows." He himself was a retired 

 naval officer without technical fitness for the posi- 

 tion, to which, indeed, he had been appointed in 

 disregard of the law providing that the Fish Com- 

 cieve- missioner should be a scientific expert. One of 

 land's President Cleveland's few weaknesses was his dis- 

 trust of scientific attainments; this had led him to 

 appoint an untrained amateur as successor to Baird, 

 Goode, and MacDonald. 



Brice's tenure of office was very short, the in- 

 coming Republican administration being quite aware 



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