IN GREEN ALASKA 



seem to make no difference. One would think that 

 if a mass of ice, weighing many thousand tons, 

 hanging upon the face of a mountain-wall steeper 

 than a house roof, detached itself from the rest at all 

 and began to move, it would gain momentum and 

 presently shoot down, as the loosened ice and snow 

 do from our slate roofs. But it does not. If the tem- 

 perature of the rocks were suddenly raised as in the 

 case of the roof, no doubt the glacier would shoot, 

 but it is not. The under surface of the ice is prob- 

 ably perpetually congealed and perpetually loos- 

 ened, and the crystallization is constantly broken 

 and constantly reformed, so that the glacier's motion 

 is more a creeping than a sliding. The carving and 

 sculpturing of the rocks is of course done by the 

 pebbles and boulders beneath the ice, and these 

 must slide or roll. 



We followed the bay or inlet to its head, and 

 anchored for the night in the large oval that marks 

 its termination. We were about fifteen miles from 

 the Pacific, being separated from it by a low, level 

 moraine of the- old glaciers. We were now sur- 

 rounded by low wooded shores, from which in the 

 long twilight came the sweet vespers of the little 

 hermit thrush. 



On the 20th another hunting party went out 



from the ship, and with an Indian guide climbed 



and threaded the snow-covered mountains nearly 



all day in quest of bears, but came back as empty 



61 



