Travels in Alaska 



rocks of the north wall of Cross Sound, which here 

 were very steep and awe-inspiring as the heavy swells 

 from the open sea coming in past Cape Spencer dashed 

 white against them, tossing our frail canoe up and 

 down lightly as a feather. The point reached by 

 vegetation shows that the surf dashes up to a height of 

 about seventy-five or a hundred feet. We were awe- 

 stricken and began to fear that we might be upset 

 should the ocean waves rise still higher. But little 

 Stickeen seemed to enjoy the storm, and gazed at the 

 foam-wreathed cliffs like a dreamy, comfortable 

 tourist admiring a sunset. We reached the mouth of 

 Taylor Bay about two or three o'clock in the after- 

 noon, when we had a view of the open ocean before 

 we entered the bay. Many large bergs from Glacier 

 Bay were seen drifting out to sea past Cape Spencer. 

 We reached the head of the fiord now called Taylor 

 Bay at five o'clock and camped near an immense 

 glacier with a front about three miles wide stretching 

 across from wall to wall. No icebergs are discharged 

 from it, as it is separated from the water of the fiord 

 at high tide by a low, smooth mass of outspread, over- 

 swept moraine material, netted with torrents and 

 small shallow rills from the glacier-front, with here 

 and there a lakelet, and patches of yellow mosses and 

 garden spots bright with epilobium, saxifrage, grass- 

 tufts, sedges, and creeping willows on the higher 

 ground. But only the mosses were sufficiently abun- 

 dant to make conspicuous masses of color to relieve the 

 dull slaty gray of the glacial mud and gravel. The 

 front of the glacier, like all those which do not dis- 



[ 244 ] 



