IN THE GOAT AND GLACIER FIELDS 



only his black-pointed crest was visible, like a 

 floating buoy, above the feathery sea of encir- 

 cling clouds. 



As this was our first glacier travel we felt very 

 much that timidity one would experience in 

 walking on eggs, fearing our horses might slip on 

 the treacherous ice, which was interwoven with 

 crevasses and pot-holes, ridges and gullies. 

 Solid terra firma we had all found dangerous 

 enough at times, but this glacier traveling the 

 first hour of that first day was the most ticklish 

 thing we had experienced in many moons. 

 After that we took it with steadier assurance, 

 and didn't feel thrilly any more. As every horse 

 in the outfit had been sharp-shod at McCarthy 

 before leaving, we finally settled down to a regu- 

 lar sourdough form of contentment and took 

 every slip, slide and skate as a matter of course, 

 trying to think of these hair-breadth escapes 

 from instant death (as they sometimes appeared 

 to us) as the ordinary events of a hunting trip in 

 the Far North. 



Just the same, if any of my readers believes 

 that an Alaska glacier is anything resembling a 

 boulevard or skating rink in smoothness you 

 should be disillusioned; for there are moun- 

 tains, peaks, valleys and canons on the glacier — 

 all on a small scale, it is true, but they are there 

 in as varied projection and dejection as in a 

 range of the rockiest mountains. The glacier 

 surface is serrated with little streamlets; cracks 



59 



