A JIOSTH WITH THE MUIR GLACIER. 47 



1887, with the prow of the steamer within twenty feet of 

 the ice-front, is one hundred and six fathoms (636 feet), and 

 no bottom. According to my measurements, taken by level- 

 ing up on the shore, the height of the ice at the extremity 

 of the projecting angle in the middle of the inlet was 250 

 feet, and the front was perpendicular. Back a few hun- 

 dred feet from the projecting point, and along the front 

 nearer the shores, the perpendicular face of the ice was a lit- 

 tle over 300 feet. A little farther back, on a line even with 

 the shoulders of the mountains between which the glacier 

 emerges to meet the water, the general height is 408 feet. 

 From here the surface of the glacier rises toward the east and 

 northeast about 100 feet to the mile. On going out in that 

 direction on the ice seven miles (as near as I could estimate), 

 I found myself, by the barometer, 1,050 feet above the bay. 

 The main body of the glacier occupies a vast amphithea- 

 tre, with diameters ranging from thirty to forty miles. This 

 estimate was made from various views obtained from the 

 mountain-summits near its mouth, when points whose dis- 

 tances were known in other directions were in sight. Nine 

 main streams of ice unite to form the grand trunk of the 

 glacier. These branches come from every direction north 

 of the east-and-west line across the mouth of the glacier ; 

 and no less than seventeen sub-branches can be seen coming 

 in to join the main streams from the mountains near the rim 

 of the amphitheatre, making twenty-six in all. Numerous 

 rocky eminences also rise above the surface of the ice, like 

 islands from the sea, corresponding to what are called nuna- 

 tahs in Greenland. The two of these visited, situated about 

 four miles back from the front, showed that they had been 

 recently covered with ice — their surfaces being smoothed 

 and scored, and glacial debris being deposited everywhere 

 upon them. Upon the side from which the ice approached 

 these islands (the stoss side) it rose, like breakers on the sea- 

 shore, several hundred feet higher than it was immediately 

 on the lee side. A short distance farther down on the lee 

 side, however, the ice closes up to its normal height at that 



