FAR AND NEAR 



larger Muir, had swept down the valley and de- 

 stroyed the forests. 



In the mean time the rest of us spent the days on 

 the glacier and in the vicinity, walking, sketching, 

 painting, photographing, dredging, mountain cUmb- 

 ing, as our several tastes prompted. 



We were in the midst of strange scenes, hard to 

 render in words : the miles upon miles of moraines 

 upon either hand, gray, loosely piled, scooped, 

 plowed, channeled, sifted, from fifty to two hundred 

 feet high; the sparkhng sea water dotted with blue 

 bergs and loose drift ice ; the towering masses of 

 almost naked rock, smoothed, carved, rounded, 

 granite-ribbed, and snow-crowned, that looked down 

 upon us from both sides of the inlet ; and the cleft, 

 toppling, staggering front of the great glacier in its 

 terrible labor-throes stretching before us from shore 

 to shore. 



We saw the world-shaping forces at work ; we 

 scrambled over plains they had built but yesterday. 

 We saw them transport enormous rocks and tons 

 on tons of soil and debris from the distant moun- 

 tains; we saw the remains of extensive forests they 

 had engulfed probably within the century, and were 

 now uncovering again; we saw their turbid rushing 

 streams loaded with newly ground rocks and soil- 

 making material ; we saw the beginnings of vegeta- 

 tion in the tracks of the retreating glacier ; our 

 dredgers brought up the first forms of sea life along 

 46 



