56 



JOHN BURROUGHS 



sented long high palisades of ice to the water, like the 

 Muir, but were far less active and explosive. The Hub- 

 bard Glacier is just at the sharp bend of the elbow, a reg- 

 ular ' fiddler's ' elbow where the bay, much narrowed, 

 turns abruptly from northeast to south. Here, with a 

 Yakutat Indian for pilot, we entered upon the strange and 

 weird scenery of Russell Fiord and into waters that no 

 ship the size of ours had before navigated. This part of 

 the bay is in size like the Hudson and about sixty miles 



in length, but how 

 wild and savage! 

 A succession of 

 mountains of al- 

 most naked rock, 

 now scored and 

 scalloped and pol- 

 ished by the old 

 glaciers, now with 

 vast moraines up- 

 on their sides, or 

 heaped at their 

 feet, which the 

 rains and melting 

 snows have plow- 

 ed and ribbed and 

 carved into many 

 fantastic forms 

 There was an air 

 of seclusion and 

 remoteness about 

 it all, as if this had 

 been a special playground of the early ice gods, a nook 

 or alley set apart for them in which to indulge every 

 whim and fancy. And what could be more whimsical or 

 fantastic than yonder glacier playing the mountain goat, 



CASCADING GLACIER, RUSSELL FIORD. 



