86 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
very curious spoons they carve from the horns of the mountain goat, which are 
figured on page 85, and beautifully woven mats, and the baskets shown on 
page 68, may be purchased ; and, in leaving a few pieces of silver among 
them for their own handiwork, little as it is that we have thus done for them, it 
is far more than the extremists of either side in the Indian question have done, 
those who would exterminate, or those who would sentimentalize in print over 
their wrongs. 
Bidding the mining metropolis of Alaska farewell, our bowsprit is once 
more pointed for the Pacific Sea ; but, before we reach it, or get quite to it, we 
turn northward and enter Glacier Bay, its name signifying its main attractions. 
Glaciers, which are great rivers or sheets of ice made from compacted snows, 
are functions as much of altitude as of high latitude ; and both unite here, with 
an air charged with moisture from the warm Pacific waters, to make the grand 
glaciers which are to be seen in this bay. In the immediate vicinity are the 
Mount St. Elias Alps, a snowy range which culminates in the well-known peak 
from which it derives its name ; and, radiating from their flanks, come down these 
rivers of ice, reaching the sea-level in the greatest perfection in Glacier Bay, 
the largest one of the grand group being the Muir Glacier, after Professor John 
Muir, the scientist, of California, who is said to be the first to discover it. I 
will give the language of th e man who claims to be the second to arrive upon 
the scene, and who gives his account in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, writing 
from Glacier Bay, July 14, 1883 : 
“ When Dick Willoughby told of the great glacier, thirty miles up the bay, 
the thud of whose falling ice could be heard and felt at his house, the captain 
of the ‘ Idaho ’ said he would go there, and took this Dick Willoughby along 
to find the place and prove the tale. Away we went coursing up Glacier Bay, a 
fleet of 112 little icebergs gayly sailing out to meet us as we left our anchorage 
the next morning. Entering into these unknown and unsurveyed waters, the lead 
was cast through miles of bottomless channels ; and, when the pilot neared a 
green and mountainous little island, he made me an unconditional present of 
the domain, and duly entered its bearings on the ship’s log. For a summer 
resort my island possesses unusual advantages, and I hereby invite all suffering 
and perspiring St. Louis to come to that emerald spot in latitude 58 degrees 29 
minutes north, and longitude 135 degrees 52 minutes west from Greenwich, and 
enjoy the July temperature of 42 degrees, the whale fishing, the duck hunting, 
and a sight of the grandest glacier in the world. 
“But one white man had ever visited the glacier before us, and he was the 
irrepressible geologist and scientist, John Muir, who started out in an Indian 
canoe, with a few blankets and some hard-tack, and spent days scrambling over 
the icy wastes. Feeling our way along carefully, we cast anchor beside a 
grounded iceberg, and the photographers were rowed off to a small island to 
take the view of the ship in the midst of that arctic scenery. Mount Crillon 
showed his hoary head to us in glimpses between the clouds ; and then, rounding 
Willoughby Island, which the owner declares is solid marble of a quality to rival 
