124 Cruise of the "Alerts 



Video for artificers and material to repair the bottom, and for a 

 new crank-shaft for her engines, which had also recently come to 

 grief. 



On the 9th of February we bade good-bye to the officers ol 

 the Maraii/icnse, and steamed back to Port Gallant. 



Some days subsequently we moved westward to Playa Parda 

 Cove in Crooked Reach, our boats having been meanwhile engaged 

 in charting the coastline. 



On February iSth a small party of us made a trip in the steam 

 cutter from Playa Parda Cove to visit a glacier which is situated 

 about six miles to the eastward. We steamed round to the inlet, 

 which is marked on the chart as Glacier Bay, and moored the 

 cutter under a lofty cliff near the head of the bay. The land 

 here was low and flat, covered with a dense forest, and bounded 

 on either side by precipitous lofty cliffs, whose smooth faces 

 exhibited planings and scorings due to the abrading action of old 

 glaciers. I landed about the middle of the low muddy beach, 

 which extended from cliff to cliff, and proceeded to penetrate the 

 forest in the direction of the glacier. Here I at first found some 

 difficulty in advancing, for after tearing my way through a dense 

 prickly scrub of barberry bushes, I came upon an even more 

 serious obstacle, in the shape of a broad and rapid torrent of 

 mud-coloured water, which it was absolutely necessary to cross. 

 This was one of the streams which flowed from under the glacier. 

 Cautiously feeling my way, and steadying mjseh against the 

 rushing water, I just managed to get across, finding the process 

 rather cold ; and now, after traversing a belt of forest, which was 

 only half a mile in width, but which gave me forty-five minutes 

 hard work, I emerged all at once from the gloomy shade of the 

 beech trees to find my eyes dazzled by a glare of white light, and 

 the foot of the glacier straight before me. The line of trees was 

 separated from the snout of the glacier by a freshly-accumulating 

 terminal moraine, of about one hundred yards in width ; and 

 where this moraine adjoined the sharply-defined edge of the forest. 



