"Travels in Alaska 



on my way back, knowing I would be drenched any- 

 how, and firmly tied my mountain shoes, tightened 

 my belt, shouldered my ice-axe, and, thus free and 

 ready for rough work, pushed on, regardless as pos- 

 sible of mere rain. Making my way up a steep granite 

 slope, its projecting polished bosses encumbered here 

 and there by boulders and the ground and bruised 

 ruins of the ragged edge of the forest that had been 

 uprooted by the glacier during its recent advance, I 

 traced the side of the glacier for two or three miles, 

 finding everywhere evidence of its having encroached 

 on the woods, which here run back along its edge for 

 fifteen or twenty miles. Under the projecting edge of 

 this vast ice-river I could see down beneath it to a 

 depth of fifty feet or so in some places, where logs and 

 branches were being crushed to pulp, some of it al- 

 most fine enough for paper, though most of it stringy 

 and coarse. 



After thus tracing the margin of the glacier for 

 three or four miles, I chopped steps and climbed to 

 the top, and as far as the eye could reach, the nearly 

 level glacier stretched indefinitely away in the gray 

 cloudy sky, a prairie of ice. The wind was now al- 

 most moderate, though rain continued to fall, which 

 I did not mind, but a tendency to mist in the drooping 

 draggled clouds made me hesitate about attempt- 

 ing to cross to the opposite shore. Although the dis- 

 tance was only six or seven miles, no traces at this 

 time could be seen of the mountains on the other side, 

 and in case the sky should grow darker, as it seemed 

 inclined to do, I feared that when I got out of sight of 



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