276 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



Farther east, in Glacier Bay, the celebrated Muir 

 Glacier discharges ice at the rate of 30,000,000 cubic feet 

 daily during the summer, and is the most notable 

 example of a tide-water glacier. It has an area of three 

 hundred and fifty square miles, and the main trunk 

 which is thirty to forty miles broad is suppHed by 

 twenty-six tributaries, twenty of which are each greater 

 than the Mer de Glace in Switzerland; the ice stands 

 about one hundred to two hundred feet above the water 

 at the mouth and reaches down probably a great dis- 

 tance beneath its surface. Unfortunately for the pleasure 

 of many tourists, however, the Muir Glacier was badly 

 shattered by an earthquake and the bay choked with ice. 



But the greatest of all Alaskan glaciers we were 

 presently to witness in its sublimity, for after we had 

 left Yakutat and stood out to sea again to make the head 

 of the Inside Passage, the sun melted aside the screen of 

 clouds which hid the vast range of mountains and we 

 looked back upon the dazzUng white peak of Mt. St. 

 Elias and its kindred, rising apparently directly from the 

 sea about a hundred miles distant. For almost a hun- 

 dred miles this cluster of lofty mountain tops rises 15,000 

 to 20,000 feet above the sea level. On the seaward face 

 of their giant Mt. St. EHas, long considered to be the 

 loftiest summit in America, we could see the vast Malas- 

 pina Glacier, covering an area of 1,500 square miles 

 (nearly a tenth the total area of Switzerland), fronting 

 the sea for more than fifty miles of width, bearing on its 

 surface layers of earth and forest. One of its tributaries, 

 the Seward Glacier, is itself more than fifty miles long 

 and three miles broad at its narrowest point. The 

 fortunate glimpse of that spectacle, as the morning sun 

 illumined the realm of ice and snow, is one which I shall 

 never forget. 



