THE DISCOVERY OF HARRIMAN FIORD 7 1 



Two things constantly baffle and mislead the eye in all 

 these Alaska waters — size and distance. Things are on 

 a new scale. The standard one brings with him will not 

 hold. The eye says it is three miles to such a point and 

 it turns out six; or that the front of yonder glacier is a 

 hundred feet high and it is two hundred or more. For 

 my part I never succeeded in bringing my eye up to the 

 Alaska scale. Many a point, many a height, which I 

 marked for my own, from the deck of the ship, seemed to 

 recede from me when I turned my steps toward it. The 

 wonderfully clear air probably had something to do with 

 the illusion. Forms were so distinct that one fancied 

 them near at hand when they were not. 



On shore we found gulls and Arctic terns nesting on 

 little sandy hillocks, and saw oyster-catchers, a ptarmigan, 

 and the wandering tattler. In the water the marbled mur- 

 relets were common; with their short wings and plump 

 round bodies they looked like sea quail. Our first and only 

 mishap to the ship in these waters befell us here — the 

 breaking of one of the blades of the propeller upon a cake 

 of ice, which had the effect of making our craft limp a little. 



HARRIMAN FIORD. 



Later in the afternoon we ascended an arm of Port 

 Wells more to the westward and entered upon a voyage 

 of discovery. We steamed up to a glacier of prodigious 

 size that reared its front across the head of the inlet and 

 barred further progress in that direction — -the Barry 

 Glacier. According to the U. S. Coast Survey map we 

 were at the end of navigation in these waters, but Mr. 

 Harriman suggested to the Captain that he take the ship 

 a little nearer the glacier, when a way seemed open to 

 the left. As we progressed the mountains fell apart and 

 a passage opened there around the corner, like a street 

 coming in at right angles to a main thoroughfare. 



