MUIR GLACIER 



35 



THE MUIR GLACIER. 



The next day finds us in Glacier Bay on our way to the 

 Muir Glacier. Our course is up an arm of the sea, dotted 

 with masses of floating ice, till in the distance we see the 

 great glacier itself. Its front looks gray and dim there 

 twenty miles away, but in the background the mountains 

 that feed it lift up vast masses of snow in the afternoon sun. 

 At five o'clock we drop 

 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 bot- 

 tom within reach of our an- 

 chor cables. Could the inlet 

 have been emptied of its 

 water for a moment we should have seen before us a pali- 

 sade of ice nearly 1,000 feet higher and over two miles 

 long, with a turbid river, possibly half a mile wide, boiling 



MUIR CABIN, GLACIER BAY, BUILT 

 IN 189O. 



