There are no less than seven glaciers discharging into Glacier Bay and sending out beautiful bergs to drift up and down Icy Straits with the tides and winds. Rendu, Carroll, Grand Pacific, Johns Hopkins, Hugh Miller, and Geikie front on the bay or its narrow inlets.
Brady Glacier has a three-mile frontage on Wimbledon, or Taylor, Bay, which opens into Icy Straits.
When, on her mid-June voyage from Seattle in 1905, the Santa Ana drew out and away from Sitka, and turning with a wide sweep, went drifting slowly through the maze of green islands and set her prow "to Westward," one of the dreams of my life was "come true."
I was on my way to the far, lonely, and lovely Aleutian Isles,—the green, green isles crested with fire and snow that are washed on the north by the waves of Behring Sea.
It was a violet day. There were no warm purple tones anywhere; but the cool, sparkling violet ones that mean the nearness of mountains of snow. One could almost feel the crisp ting of ice in the air, and smell the sunlight that opalizes, without melting, the ice.
Round and white, with the sunken nest of the thunder-bird on its crest, Mount Edgecumbe rose before us; the pale green islands leaned apart to let us through; the sea-birds, white and lavender and rose-touched, floated with us; the throb of the steamer was like a pulse beating in one's own blood; there were words in the violet light that lured us on, and a wild sweet song in the waves that broke at our prow.
"There can be nothing more beautiful on earth," I said; but I did not know. An hour came soon when I stood with bared head and could not speak for the beauty about me; when the speech of others jarred upon me like an insult, and the throb of the steamer, which had been a sensuous pleasure, pierced my exaltation like a blow.
The long violet day of delight wore away at last, and night came on. A wild wind blew from the southwest, and the mood of the North Pacific Ocean changed. The ship rolled heavily; the waves broke over our decks. We could see them coming—black, bowing, rimmed with white. Then came the shock—followed by the awful shudder and struggle of the boat. The wind was terrific. It beat the breath back into the breast.
It was terrible and it was glorious. Those were big moments on the texas of the Santa Ana; they were worth living, they were worth while. But on account of the storm, darkness fell at midnight; and as the spray was now breaking in sheets over the bridge and texas, I was assisted to my cabin—drenched, shivering, happy.