PHOTOGRAPHY IN GLACIAL ALASKA 



59 



bergs recalls an idea I had one 

 evening when we were en- 

 camped on the west shore of 

 Yakutat Bay. This was to the 

 effect that a city photographer 

 ■ought to feel perfectly at home 

 in glacial Alaska. The Arctic 

 wilds have been termed the 

 "silent places," but no phrase 

 could have been farther from 

 the truth as applied to this time 

 and place. The rain was beat- 

 ing upon the side and top of 

 the tent, and the wind kept 

 snapping its loose flap endlessly. 



In front of the tent the surf 

 roared in ascending and dimin- 

 ishing crescendos, sending surge 

 after surge over the iceberg- 

 littered sand beach. Farther 

 out in the bay the occasional 

 breaking up and overturning of 

 a big iceberg gave rise to a 

 continuous sound like the rattle 

 of a near-by express train. At 

 rarer intervals one heard the 

 distant boom, like that of a big 

 gun, sent forth by the detach- 

 ing of an iceberg from the 

 glacier front. 



Nor was this all. To one side 

 of the tent a mountain torrent 

 came rushing across the flat, 

 while from the mountains in 

 the rear one heard the low 

 rumble of avalanches among 

 the cascading glaciers occupy- 

 ing their steep valleys. The 

 combination, and simultaneous 

 ■occurrence, and continuance of 

 all these noises gave rise to a very pande- 

 monium of sound, and of a volume which 

 would easily overtop the roar of the busi- 

 est of busy city streets at the height of 

 the day's activities. 



While the pictorial interest of the 

 scientific-record pictures often suffers be- 

 cause the point of view must be chosen 

 with more regard to showing the detail 

 of some particular phenomenon than to 

 the composition or the character of the 

 foreground, still there are opportunities 

 for securing many striking effects in a 



THE PHOTOGRAPHERS PACK 



country of such scenic magnificence, even 

 though the pictures are to have their 

 chief value as records. Sometimes, too, 

 a whole geological story may be included 

 in one picture, as is the case of the photo- 

 graph of the Galiano glacier reproduced 

 on page 48 of this Magazine. 



This illustration is unique in that it 

 reproduces a view where are shown in 

 miniature all the conditions and phenom- 

 ena of the extensive and famous Malas- 

 pina glacier and its feeder tributaries. 

 On the mountain summits of the back- 



