130 JOHN MUIR 



was seen. That there should be no discharge from the 

 sea side of the Fairweather Range and so lavish a dis- 

 charge from the other is not so surprising, however, 

 when we consider that the area of the western slope and 

 its snowfields is far less extensive, while at the same time 

 the waste from the sea winds and from sunshine, on ac- 

 count of the direction of the trend of the Range, is 

 greater. A landing was made near the west end of the 

 La Perouse ice-wall to examine a forest, part of which 

 had been overwhelmed by an advance of the glacier; an- 

 other part was falling by the undermining action of a 

 glacial stream. Some of the Taylor Bay and Prince Wil- 

 liam Sound forests have been destroyed in the same way, 

 whether simultaneously or not I am unable to say. When 

 I visited the Brady Glacier in the summer of 1880 I found 

 thousands of trees, many of them more than a century 

 old, which had been uprooted and crushed like weeds be- 

 fore the plow, showing that this glacier, instead of reced- 

 ing, had risen higher and advanced its front beyond the 

 position where it stood when Vancouver explored the 

 bay in 1794. The trees lining the banks were barked 

 and scarred, very effectively blazing a high ice-mark 

 for miles. The surface of the glacier had already fallen 

 fifteen or twenty feet below its highest flood-level, though 

 the front had receded but little; its huge ice-cliffs on the 

 east end were still towering portentously above the 

 spruces that stood a few feet in front of them. The 

 buried forests of Glacier Bay record still greater and 

 more impressive changes in the recession and advance of 

 grand ice floods and water floods. 



In our northward journey dark clouds hid the moun- 

 tains until we reached Yakutat. Then the heavens opened 

 and St. Elias, gloriously arrayed, bade us welcome, while 

 the heaving, plunging bergs roared and thundered. 



Here we spent immortal days, studying, gazing, sailing 



