GLACIER BAY I 25 



Alaska fiords, but the bergs in it are usually far too 

 closely packed to allow a passage for vessels of any size; 

 oftentimes it is difficult to reach its glaciers even in the 

 smallest canoes. About five miles from the mouth the 

 bay divides into two main arms, about twenty and twenty- 

 five miles long, in the farthest recesses of which its four 

 glaciers are hidden. A hundred or more glaciers of the 

 second and third class may be seen along the walls, and 

 about as many snowy cataracts, which with the plunging 

 bergs keep all the fiord in a roar. The scenery in both 

 of the long arms and their side branches is of the wildest 

 description, especially in their upper reaches, where the 

 granite walls, streaked with waterfalls, rise in sheer, 

 massive precipices, like those of Yosemite Valley, to a 

 height of 3,000 and even over 4,000 feet. 



The Taku Inlet, usually accessible to the tourist steam- 

 ers, is about eighteen miles long, and drains many gla- 

 ciers, great and small. Sailing up the middle of it one 

 may still count some forty-five, descending from a group 

 of high mountains at the head and making a grand dis- 

 play of their crystal wealth. Three of them reach the 

 level of the sea; only one, however, the beautiful Taku 

 Glacier, now discharges bergs. It comes sweeping for- 

 ward in majestic curves and pours its countless roaring, 

 plunging ice masses into a western branch of the Inlet, 

 next the one occupied by the Taku River. Thus we have 

 here in one view, flowing into the sea side by side, a river 

 of ice and a river of water, both abounding in cascades 

 and rapids, yet infinitely different in their rate of motion 

 and in the songs they sing — a rare object lesson, worth 

 coming far to learn. 



Glacier Bay, about fifty miles long, with many deep, 

 high-walled branches, is the iciest of all the inlets which 

 fringe the coast. Both to the north and south of it the 

 great tide-water glaciers are generally less active, less 



