A CHROMATIC BEAR HUNT 



fetched up violently at the end of our towlines, 

 backs to the wall, like tethered steers, and 

 when the last unstable precipice was behind 

 us we congratulated ourselves. 



But an even greater wonder confronted us. 

 The river turned at right angles and there 

 stood Miles Glacier, the big brother to Childs, 

 which we had just passed. It fronted us 

 boldly, a gunshot distant, so it seemed, a 

 huge, desolate monster thrice the size of Man- 

 hattan Island, with a ragged base five miles 

 across, wedged into a valley so tightly that it 

 seemed to split the mountains asunder. In 

 reality it was four miles away, but we saw its 

 every smallest detail and followed it with our 

 eyes up into the range until it melted into dis- 

 tances which no man has ever covered. Its 

 edges were dead and blackened as if by decay; 

 in places its front looked like a row of gigantic 

 white-cowled monks. The lake which lapped 

 it, in reality a broadening of the river, was 

 choked with drifting ruins of ice held prisoner 

 by a bar at the lower end where the waters 

 escaped. Pastured thus, the bergs cruised 

 lonesomely, drifted by wind and wave, towed 

 in fantastic figures by unseen eddies. At 

 times they clashed, or charged in long forma- 



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