IN GREEN ALASKA 



through before the completion of the railroad to 

 Bennett. 



The next day found us in Glacier Bay on our way 

 to the Muir Glacier. Our course was up an arm of the 

 sea, dotted with masses of floating ice, till in the dis- 

 tance we saw the great glacier itself. Its front looked 

 gray and dim there twenty miles away, but in the 

 background the mountains that feed it lifted up vast 

 masses of snow in the afternoon sun. At five o'clock 

 we dropped anchor about two miles from its front, in 

 eighty fathoms of water, abreast of the little cabin on 

 the east shore built by John Muir some years ago. 

 Not till after repeated soundings did we find bottom 

 within reach of our anchor cables. Could the inlet 

 have been emptied of its water for a moment, we 

 should have seen before us a palisade of ice nearly 

 one thousand feet higher and over two miles long, 

 with a turbid river, possibly half a mile wide, boihng 

 up from beneath it. Could we have been here many 

 centuries ago, we should have seen, much farther 

 down the valley, a palisade of ice two or three thou- 

 sand feet high. Many of these Alaskan glaciers are 

 rapidly melting and are now but the fragments of 

 their former selves. From observations made here 

 twenty years ago by John Muir, it is known that the 

 position of the front of the Muir Glacier at that time 

 was about two miles below its present position, which 

 would indicate a rate of recession of about one mile 

 in ten years. 



39 



