"Girt by mountains wild and hoary;"
and weird and wonderful as any that ever furnished theme for Norland legend.
From the lower margin of this lake a stream rushed in a series of cascades through a deep gorge to the sea, and from the valley a number of little rivulets gurgled among the stones, or wound gently through the soft moss-beds. Tracing one of these to its source, I came upon a glen which was terminated abruptly by a glacier, appearing at a little distance like a draped curtain of white satin drawn across the narrow passage, as if to screen some sacred chamber of the hills. As I approached nearer this white curtain assumed more solid shape, and I observed that a multitude of bright fountains fluttered over it. Near its centre a narrow Gothic archway led into a spacious grotto filled with a soft cerulean light, fretted with pendants of most fantastic shape and of rare transparency, which were reflected, as in a silver mirror, on the still surface of a limped pool, from which gushed forth a crystal rivulet, pure and sparkling as the cypress-embowered waters that laved the virgin limbs of the huntress-queen.
A GLACIER GROTTO.
While peering into the deep recesses of this wonderful cave, so chaste and exquisite, where solitude appeared to dwell alone and undisturbed except by the soft music of streams, I became suddenly conscious of having been enticed into danger, Actæon-like, unawares. A mass of ice broke from the glacier front and, splitting into numerous fragments, the shower came crushing down upon the rocks and in the water near me, and sent me flying precipitately and with my curiosity still unsatisfied.
Returning to the lake, I followed around its green border, plucking, as I went, a nosegay of bright flowers, which have so pleasing an association that they will not find place in the "botanical collections," but, rather, in another collection,—mementos, if less prized, more cherished; and the recollection which I shall carry with me of this charming valley, and the silvery lake, and the gushing rivulets, and the grottoed glacier, will be enhanced when I name them in remembrance of the fairest forms that ever flitted across the memory of storm-beaten traveler, and the fairest fingers that ever turned Afghan wool into a cunning device to brighten the light of a dingy cabin!
TRACES OF ESQUIMAUX.
THE MER DE GLACE.
Upon going ashore at Gale Point, I discovered traces of Esquimaux much more recent than those at Gould Bay and other places on the shores of Grinnell Land. Indeed they were of such a character as to cause me strongly to suspect that the shore is at present inhabited. The cliffs are composed of a dark sandstone which, to the northward of the Point, breaks suddenly away into a broad plain that slopes gently down to the water's edge. This plain is about five miles wide, and is bounded at the north much as at the south, by lofty cliffs, which rise above the primitive rocks back of Cape Isabella. The plain was composed of loose shingle, covered over in many places with large patches of green, through which flowed a number of broad streams of water. These streams sprang from the front of a glacier which bulged down the valley from the mer de glace. It was about four miles from the sea, and bounded the green and stony slope with a great white wall several hundred feet high, above which the snow-covered steep of the mer de glace led the eye away up to the bald summits of the distant mountains. As I looked up at this immense stream of ice it seemed as if a dozen Niagaras had been bounding together into the valley and were frozen in their fall, and the discharging waters of the river below had dried up, and flowers bloomed in the river-bed. My journal compares it to a huge white sheet, hung upon a cord stretched from cliff to cliff.