THE DISCOVERY OF GLACIER BAY, ALASKA 
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of enthusiastic passengers in Muir inlet. Through private enter- 
prise the Muir glacier and all its tributaries have been explored 
and mapped, and the work of Professor Harry Fielding Keid 
and his assistants leaves nothing for the delinquent government 
to do in that quarter. Mr Muir canoed across the front of the 
Grand Pacific glacier and the shores of the bay’s end in 1879; 
Professor Reid made a similar canoe cruise in 1892, and succeed- 
ing in it, accompanied Captain James Carroll, who took the large 
ocean steamer Queen around those upper reaches, found the un- 
suspected Johns Hopkins glacier, and, penetrating two deep 
inlets, discovered the hitherto unknown Rendu and Carroll 
glaciers, as then named by Professor Reid and published on the 
map accompanying Appleton’s Guide to Alaska. 
Mr Muir seems to be justly entitled to the honors as the dis- 
coverer of Glacier ba}'', since he first fulfilled the conditions 
of botli finding and bringing its wonders to the knowledge of 
the world. Lieutenant Wood, as he himself says, did not surely 
know that the bay was waiting to be found; that it definitely 
needed a discoverer, and his scant geographic references in the 
Century's pages did not altogether bring it to the knowledge of 
the world or stimulate others to explore. He awards all the 
honor to Mr INIuir. Lieutenant Wood was the Lief Ericsson, 
l\Ir Muir the Columbus, in this instance. 
. In five summer visits to Alaska, during one of which our party 
camped for several weeks in the cabin at tbe side of INIuir glacier, 
I made every effort to learn of earlier visitors than Mr Muir and 
Lieutenant Wood and to meet those mythical miners who were 
said to have known the bay well for years before the great glacial 
geologist went there. The closest questioning of those residents 
making these statements resulted in vague and foggy generalities. 
“ I guess so ; ” “I was told so ; ” ‘‘1 supposed so.” Not a fact, 
not a date, nor a definite statement, nor a j>article of proof could 
be obtained from these free and easy talkers of steamer wharves 
on toufist days. Tlie alleged miners had always “gone to the 
Yukon;” it was not known whether letters would reach them 
at Forty Mile creek or not; it was quite possil)le they liad left 
the Yukon, etc. These ready dispensers of information did not 
know the full names or the nial names of these miners; even 
“Slim Jim,” of .Juneau, could not help them there, but they 
were always sure that “a lot of miners” had prospected all 
around the bay at least one year before .Mr .Muir went tln're 
(1879), onhq tin; miners never thought it worth while to say 
