T^he Discovery of Glacier Bay 



crystal bluffs of the vast glacier, the intensely white, 

 far-spreading fields of ice, and the ineffably chaste 

 and spiritual heights of the Fairweather Range, which 

 were now hidden, now partly revealed, the whole 

 making a picture of icy wildness unspeakably pure 

 and sublime. 



Looking southward, a broad ice-sheet was seen ex- 

 tending in a gently undulating plain from the Pacific 

 Fiord in the foreground to the horizon, dotted and 

 ridged here and there with mountains which were as 

 white as the snow-covered ice in which they were half, 

 or more than half, submerged. Several of the great 

 glaciers of the bay flow from this one grand fountain. 

 It is an instructive example of a general glacier cover- 

 ing the hills and dales of a country that is not yet 

 ready to be brought to the light of day — not only 

 covering but creating a landscape with the features it 

 is destined to have when, in the fullness of time, the 

 fashioning ice-sheet shall be lifted by the sun, and 

 the land become warm and fruitful. The view to the 

 westward is bounded and almost filled by the glorious 

 Fairweather Mountains, the highest among them 

 springing aloft in sublime beauty to a height of nearly 

 sixteen thousand feet, while from base to summit 

 every peak and spire and dividing ridge of all the 

 mighty host was spotless white, as if painted. It 

 would seem that snow could never be made to lie on 

 the steepest slopes and precipices unless plastered on 

 when wet, and then frozen. But this snow could not 

 have been wet. It must have been fixed by being 

 driven and set in small particles like the storm-dust of 



I 149 ] 



