40 JOHN BURROUGHS 



together, the new hunting shoes pinched and rubbed, the 

 packs grew heavy, the snow grew deeper, the miles grew 

 longer, and there might not be any bears in Howling Val- 

 ley after all — Muir's imagination may have done all the 

 howling — so, after due deliberation by all hands, it was 

 voted to turn back. 



It is much easier in Alaska to bag a glacier than a bear; 

 hence our glacial party, made up of John Muir, Gilbert, 

 and Palache, who set out to explore the head of Glacier 

 Bay, was more successful than the hunters. They found 

 more glaciers than they were looking for. One large gla- 

 cier of twenty years ago had now become two, not by 

 increasing but by diminishing; the main trunk had dis- 

 appeared, leaving the two branches in separate valleys. 

 All the glaciers of this bay, four or five in number, were 

 found to have retreated many hundred feet since Muir's 

 first visit, twenty years earlier. The explorers were ab- 

 sent from the ship three days on a cruise attended with no 

 little peril. 



During the same time an ornithological and botanical 

 party of six or eight men was in camp on Gustavus Pen- 

 insula, a long, low, wooded stretch of land twenty miles 

 below Muir Glacier. Here over forty species of birds, 

 including sea birds, were observed and collected. The 

 varied thrush or Oregon robin was common and its pecu- 

 liar song or plaint, a long tapering whistle with a sort of 

 burr in it, led Ridgway a long chase through the woods 

 before he could identify the singer. Other song birds 

 found were the Western robin, the two kinglets, a song 

 sparrow, the dwarf hermit and russet-backed thrushes, 

 the lutescent warbler, the redstart, the Oregon junco and 

 a western form of the Savanna sparrow. 



Gustavus Peninsula seems to be a recent deposit of the 

 glaciers and our experts thought it not much over a cen- 

 tury old. The botanists here found a good illustration of 



