CHAPTER XV 



FROM TAKU RIVER TO TAYLOR BAY 



1 NEVER saw Alaska looking better than it did 

 when we bade farewell to Sum Dum on August 22 

 and pushed on northward up the coast toward Taku. 

 The morning was clear, calm, bright — not a cloud 

 in all the purple sky, nor wind, however gentle, to 

 shake the slender spires of the spruces or dew-laden 

 grass around the shores. Over the mountains and over 

 the broad white bosoms of the glaciers the sunbeams 

 poured, rosy as ever fell on fields of ripening wheat, 

 drenching the forests and kindling the glassy waters 

 and icebergs into a perfect blaze of colored light. 

 Every living thing seemed joyful, and nature's work 

 was going on in glowing enthusiasm, not less appre- 

 ciable in the deep repose that brooded over every 

 feature of the landscape, suggesting the coming fruit- 

 fulness of the icy land and showing the advance that 

 has already been made from glacial winter to summer. 

 The care-laden commercial lives we lead close our 

 eyes to the operations of God as a workman, though 

 openly carried on that all who will look may see. The 

 scarred rocks here and the moraines make a vivid 

 showing of the old winter-time of the glacial period, 

 and mark the bounds of the mer-de-glace that once 

 filled the bay and covered the surrounding mountains. 

 Already that sea of ice is replaced by water, in which 

 multitudes of fishes are fed, while the hundred 



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