128 



JOHN MUIR 



Grand Pacific, separated from the main glaciers and ren- 

 dered independent by the recession of the trunks beyond 

 their points of confluence. The Hugh Miller and Muir 

 have receded about two miles in the last twenty years, the 

 Grand Pacific about four, and the Geikie, Rendu and Carrol 



perhaps from seven 

 to ten miles. By 

 the recession of the 

 Grand Pacific and 

 corresponding ex- 

 tension of Reid In- 

 let an island two 

 and a half or three 

 miles long,andover 

 a thousand feet 



IN MUIR INLET, GLACIER BAY. 



high, has been added to the landscape. Only the end of this 

 island was visible in 1879. New islands have been born in 

 some of the other fiords also, and some still enveloped in 

 the glaciers show only their heads as they bide their time to 

 take their places in the young landscape. Here, then, we 

 have the work of glacial earth-sculpture going on before 

 our eyes, teaching lessons so plain that he who runs may 

 read. Evidently all the glaciers hereabouts were no great 

 time ago united, and with the multitude of glaciers which 

 loaded the mountains to the south, once formed a grand 

 continuous ice-sheet that flowed over all the island region 

 of the coast and extended at least as far down as the Strait 

 of Juan de Fuca. All the islands of the Alexander Archi- 

 pelago, great and small, as well as the headlands and prom- 

 ontories of the mainland, have a smooth, over-rubbed 

 appearance, generally free from angles except where mod- 

 ified by the after-action of local glaciers, and they all have 

 the form of greatest strength with reference to their phys- 

 ical structure and the action of an oversweeping ice sheet. 

 The network of so called canals, passages, straits, chan- 



