ON GUSTAVUS PENINSULA 



41 



the successive steps nature takes in foresting or reforest- 

 ing the land — how she creeps before she walks. The 

 first shrub is a small creeping willow that looks like a 

 kind of ' pusley.' Then comes a larger willow, less 

 creeping ; then two or more other species that become 

 quite large upright bushes; then follow the alders and 



CAMP ON POINT GUSTAVUS. 



with them various herbaceous plants and grasses, till 

 finally the spruce comes in and takes possession of the 

 land. Our collectors found the first generation of trees, 

 none of them over forty years old. Far up the mountain 

 side at a height of about 2,000 feet they came to the 

 limit of the younger growth and struck a well-defined 

 line of much older trees, showing that within probably a 

 hundred years an ice sheet 2,000 or more feet thick, an 

 older and larger Muir, had swept down the valley and de- 

 stroyed the forests. 



In the meantime the rest of us spent the days on and 

 in the vicinity of the glacier, walking, sketching, paint- 

 ing, photographing, dredging, mountain climbing, as our 

 several tastes prompted. 



