FAR AND NEAR 



larger Miiir, had swept down the valley and de« 

 stroyed the forests. 



In the mean time the rest of us spent the days on 

 the glacier and in the vicinity, walking, sketching, 

 painting, photographing, dredging, mountain climb- 

 ing, as our several tastes prompted. 



AVe were in the midst of strange scenes, hard to 

 render in words : the miles upon miles of moraines 

 upon either hand, gray, loosely piled, scooped, 

 plowed, channeled, sifted, from fifty to two hundred 

 feet high; the sparkling sea water dotted with bluo 

 bergs and loose drift ice ; the towering masses of 

 almost naked rock, smoothed, carved, rounded, 

 granite-ribbed, and snow-crowned, that looked dow^n 

 upon us from both sides of the inlet ; and the cleft, 

 toppling, staggering front of the great glacier in its 

 terrible labor-throes stretching before us from shore 

 to shore. 



We saw the world-shaping forces at work ; we 

 scrambled over plains they had built but yesterday. 

 We saw them transport enormous rocks and tons 

 on tons of soil and debris from the distant moun- 

 tains; we saw the remains of extensive forests they 

 had engulfed probably within the century, and were 

 now uncovering again; we saw their turbid rushing 

 streams loaded with newly ground rocks and soil- 

 making material; we saw the beginnings of vegeta- 

 tion in tlie tracks of the retreatin<{ Hacier ; our 

 dredgers brought up the first forms of sea life along 



4G 



