Alaska. — Muir. 297 
cjimp was being made I strolled along the shore, eagerly examin- 
ing the fossil wood with which it was strewn, and watching for 
oflimpses of the glaciers beneath the watery clouds. Next day 
the storm continued, a wild southeaster was howling over the icy 
wilderness, and everybody wished to remain in camp. Therefore 
I set out alone to see what I might learn. Pushing on through 
mud and sludgy snow I gained at length a commanding outlook 
on a bald promontory, about 1,500 feet high. All the land- 
scape was smothered in bus}- clouds, and I began to fear that 
I had climbed in vain, when at last the clouds lifted a little, and 
the ice-filled expanse of the bay, and the feet of the mountains 
that stand about it, and the imposing fronts of five of the great 
glaciers, were displaj-ed. This was my first general view of 
Glacier bay — a stern solitude of ice and snow and raw, newborn 
rocks, dim, dreary, mysterious 
I held my high ground, gained at such cost, for an hour or 
two, sheltering myself as best I could from the blast, while with 
benumbed fingers I sketched what I could see of the stormy land- 
scape, and wrote a few lines in my notebook. Then I beat my 
way back to camp over the snow-smothered ridges and bowlder 
piles and mud beds, arriving about dark. 
Mr. Young told me that the Indians were discouraged and 
would like to turn back. They feared that I had fallen, or would 
fall, or in some wa}' the expedition would come to grief in case I 
persisted in going farther. They had been asking him what pos- 
sible motive I could have in climbing mountains in such miserable 
weather; and when he replied that I was seeking knowledge, 
Toyette remarked that Muir must be a witch to seek knowledge 
in such a place. 
After coffee and hard-tack, while we crouched in the rain 
around a dull fire of fossil wood, the Indians again talked dole- 
fully, in tones that accorded well with the growling torrents 
about us and the wind among the rocks and bergs; telling sad 
stories of crushed canoes, hunters lost in snowstorms, etc. 
Toyette said that he seemed to be sailing his canoe into a 
"skookum house ' (jail) from which there was no escape, while 
the Hoonah guide said Ijluntl}' that if I was going near the noses 
of the ice- mountains he would not go with me, for we would all 
be lost by bergs rising from the bottom, as many of his tribe had 
been. They seemed to be sinking deeper into dismal dumps 
