Across Pinnacle Pass. 



The morning after reaching Camp 12 dawned gloriously bright- 

 The night had been cold, and a heavy frost had silenced every 

 rill from the snow-slopes above. The clear, bracing air gave us 

 renewed energy and a firmer desire to press on. Mr. Kerr and 

 myself made an excursion ahead, while Lindsey and Crnmback 

 brought up a load of supplies from the cache left on the glacier 

 below Camp 11. 



On gaining the center of the Marvine glacier we had a mag- 

 nificent view down the broad ice-stream, bordered on either hand 

 by towering, snow-laden precipices, and changing, as the eye fol- 

 lowed the downward slope, from pure white to brown and black 

 in the distance. Far below we could barely discern the wooded 

 summit of Blossom island, beyond which stretched the seem- 

 ingly limitless ice-fields of the Malaspina glacier. All about us 

 the white slope reflected the sunlight with painful brilliancy, 

 while the black moraines and forests below and the mists over 

 the distant ocean, made it seem as if one was looking down into 

 a lower and darker world. 



As we advanced toward the head of the glacier we found, as 

 on several subsequent occasions, that the nearer we approached 

 the sources of an ice-stream the easier our progress became. 

 Following up the center of the glacier, we learned that it curved 

 toward the east ; and after an hour or two of weary tramping we 

 reached the great amphitheatre in which it has its source. All 

 about us were rugged mountain slopes, heavily loaded with snow, 

 and forming clear white cliffs from which avalanches had de- 

 scended. To the- westward the wall of the amphitheatre was 

 broken, and it was apparent that we could cross its rim in that di- 

 rection. Pressing onward up the gently ascending slope, we came 

 at length to a gap in the mountains bordered on the north by a 

 towering cliff fully a thousand feet high, and were rejoiced to find 

 that the snow surface on the opposite side of the divide inclined 

 westward with a grade as gentle as the one we had ascended. 

 Looking far down the western snow-slope, we could see where it 

 joined a large glacier flowing southward past the end of the great 

 cliffs which extended westward from the divide. The glacier we 

 saw in the valley below is designated on our map as the Seward 

 glacier, in honor of William H. Seward, the former Secretary of 

 State, who negotiated the purchase of Alaska for the United 



States. 



(129) 



