CHAPTEE III. 



A MONTH WITH THE MUIR GLACIER. 



In the summer of 1886 a party of three, consisting of 

 Rev. J. L. Patton, Mr. Prentiss Baldwin, and myself, ar- 

 ranged to visit the Muir Glacier, at the head of Glacier 

 Bay in Alaska, for the purpose of collecting facts concerning 

 its motion, its size, its present general condition, and its 

 probable past history and future career. The present chapter 

 will detail with some minuteness the results of our observa- 

 tion. 



On the 4th of August, in company with two Indians for 

 assistants, we were landed by the excursion-steamer on the 

 east side of the inlet, directly in front of the Muir Glacier, 

 with a dug-out canoe as our only means of escape, and two 

 canvas tents as our only shelter. Here we remained a whole 

 month, or until September 2d, while the steamer made a round 

 trip to Portland, Oregon, and returned with another load of 

 freight and tourists. The region is the most desolate imagi- 

 nable. Indians rarely navigate its upper waters, and it is 

 visited only by the steamer to allow tourists to behold for a 

 few hours the wonderful spectacle of a stream of ice more 

 than a mile in width, and four hundred feet in height, mov- 

 ing onward with irresistible force to meet the equally irre- 

 sistible waters of a deep tidal inlet. Those who have here, 

 for a few hours only, witnessed the " calving " of icebergs, 

 and heard the detonations preceding and accompanying the 

 falling of the masses from the ice-front, can never forget the 

 scene. Much less can we forget it, who spent a month in 

 the majestic presence of the mighty glacier. 



