IN GREEN ALASKA 



rural paradise and steamed away to Kukak Bay on 

 the mainland, to pick up the party we had left there 

 on the night of June 30. It was a relief to find they 

 had had no misadventure and were well pleased 

 with their expedition. They described one view that 

 made the listener wish he had been with them : thev 

 had climbed to the top of a long green slope behind 

 their camp, and had suddenly found themselves on 

 the brink of an almost perpendicular mountain-wall. 

 Through a deep notch in this wall they had looked 

 down two thousand feet into a valley beneath them 

 invaded by a great glacier that swept down from the 

 snow-white peaks beyond. The spectacle was so 

 unexpected and so tremendous that it fairly took 

 their breaths away. From the deck of the ship the 

 slope up which their course lay looked like a piece of 

 stretched green baize cloth. 



An event of this day's cruising which I must 

 not forget was the strange effects wrought for us 

 by that magician Mirage : islands and headlands in 

 the air, long, low capes doubled, one above anotlier, 

 with a lucid space between them ; a level snowy 

 range standing up slightly above a nearer rocky 

 one, drawn out and manipulated till it suggested a 

 vast Grecian temple crowning a rocky escarpment, — 

 fantasy, illusion, enchantment, — trick played with 

 sea and shore on every hand that afternoon. 



From this point we turned to the island again, and 

 in the middle of the night gathered in the bear huiit- 



93 



