Here the mountains had become much higher than any they had approached before. Instead of peaks from twenty-five hundred to four thousand feet in height, they were close to those that reached an altitude of six or eight thousand feet. One of these was Mt. Powell, a naked peak stretching up like a pyramid, more than six thousand feet high; and farther on there were others still higher. The first of the glaciers was seen just to the north of Fawn Bluff, and was recognized by Hugh, who called out to Jack: "There, son, there's a chunk of ice. Don't you see how it shines, blue in the sunlight, just like one of the glaciers that we got sight of in the Piegan country?"
"So it is, Hugh. I recognize it. My! Don't I wish we could get up close to it; but it's awful high on the mountains and terribly thick timber below it."
"Yes," said Hugh, "I reckon it would be quite a climb to get up there."
"How different these mountains are," said Jack, "from our Rockies. They rise so much more steeply; but like the Rockies, there is a big cliff of wall rock on the top of each one of them."
"Yes," said Hugh, "in the mountains that we see from the plains the slope is more gradual; first foot hills, and then a long timber slope, and then lastly the rocky peaks that rise above the timber line. But here there are no foot-hills, and there are no gradual rising slopes between us and the main peaks. A man's eye doesn't get a chance to adapt itself to the highest hills by measuring the gentler slopes that are nearer to him. Here the mountains rise either in a continual slope or else in a series of cut walls, one above the other, to the straight up peaks. I don't believe the distance on foot to one of these mountains is more than twice the mountain's height. I don't believe many people that have not been here have had a chance to stand at the sea-level and look straight up to a snow peak right above them as high as these are. That is what makes these mountains seem so high and so wonderful."
A few moments later the canoe rounded a point and a long reach of the inlet was exposed to view.
"There," said Fannin, "look off to the right! There's something that I don't think many people have seen."
"My! I guess not!" exclaimed Jack.
Off to the right was a tall mountain whose summit was hidden, but which seemed to end in a long horizontal crest crowned by a wavy covering of palest blue, the lower end of a great glacier. It could be conjectured that, running down from some very high point, this river of ice reached the top of this mighty precipice, and little by little was pushed over, breaking off in huge masses, which, from time to time, fell over the cliff and down into the hidden recesses at its foot, where possibly another smaller glacier made up of these icy fragments ran, for a little way, down the valley.