90 
THROUGH WONDERLAND . 
frozen river of ice, ever slowly moving to the sea, and piling the enormous 
masses higher between the mountain banks, until their summit towers hundreds 
of feet in the air. Where the point of the glacier pushes out into and overhangs 
the water, vast fragments breaking apart every few moments of their own 
weight, and falling with a thundering crash into the sea, to float away as enor¬ 
mous icebergs, it affords a spectacle which can only be understood and appre¬ 
ciated by one who beholds it with his own eyes. From the summit of Muir 
Glacier no less than twenty-nine others are to be seen in various directions, all 
grinding and crowding their huge masses toward the sea, a sight which must 
certainly be one which few other scenes can equal.” 
Says a writer, Mr. Edward Roberts, in the Overland Monthly ; “ I do not 
know how wide, nor how long, nor how deep Glacier Bay is. One does not 
think of figures and facts when sailing over its waters and enjoying the novel 
features. Flood Switzerland, and sail up some of its canons toward Mont 
Blanc, and you will have there another Glacier Bay. But until the sea-waves 
wash the feet of that Swiss peak, and until one can sail past the glaciers of that 
country, there will never be found a companion bay to this of Alaska. Norway, 
with all its ruggedness, has nothing to equal it; and there is not a mountain in 
all the ranges of the Rockies which has the majestic gracefulness of Fairweather 
Peak, which looks down upon the bay. 
“ Imagine the view we had as we turned out of Lynn Canal and moved into 
the ice-strewn waters of the strange place. Above hung the sun, warm and 
clear, and lighting up the wide waste of waters till they glistened like flashing 
brilliants. Away to the left and right ran sombre forests, and long stretches of 
yellow-colored stone, and rocky cliffs that now ran out into the bay, and, again, 
rose high and straight from out it. No villages were in sight; no canoes 
dotted the waters; but all was desolate, neglected, still; and cakes of ice, white 
in the distance and highly. colored nearer to, floated about our ship. And 
there, in the northwest, rising so high above the intervening hills that all its 
pinnacles, all its gorges, and its deep ravines of moving ice were visible, was 
Fairweather, loftiest, whitest, most delicately moulded peak of all the snowy 
crests in this north land. From a central spur, topping all its fellows, lesser 
heights helped form a range which stretched for miles across the country, and 
on whose massive shoulders lay a mantle of such pure whiteness that the sky 
above was bluer still by contrast, and the forests grew doubly dark and drear. 
All through the afternoon we sailed toward the glorious beacon, while the air 
grew colder every hour, and the ice cakes, hundreds of tons in weight, grew 
more numerous as the daylight began to wane. The glaciers of Glacier Bay 
are the largest in Alaska. Formed among the highest crags of the Fairweather 
range, they gradually deepen and widen as they near the sea, and end, at last, 
in massive cliffs of solid ice, often measuring three hundred feet high, and 
having a width of several miles. The surface of the glaciers is rough and 
billowy, resembling the waves of a troubled sea frozen into solid blocks of ice 
at the moment of their wildest gambols. Constantly pressed forward by the 
