At the mouth of the tunnel there are always confused noises and rhythmic vibrations to be heard in the dark recesses within. The air is filled with pulsations like deep organ notes. It takes but little imagination to transform these strange sounds into the voices and songs of the mythical inhabitants of the nether regions.
Toward the right of the tunnel, as shown on plate 14, there appears a portion of the former river bed, now abandoned, owing to the cutting across of a bend in the stream. The floor of this old channel is mostly of clear, white ice, and has a peculiar, hummocky appearance, which indicates the direction of the current that once flowed over it. A portion of the bed is covered with sand and gravel, and along its border are gravel terraces resting on ice. These occurrences illustrate the fact that rivers flowing through channels of ice are governed by the same general laws as the more familiar surface streams.
After examining this glacial river, during our first excursion on the Lucia glacier, we reached its western banks by crossing above the upper archway. Traversing the sand plain to the westward, we came to another stream of nearly equal interest, flowing along the western margin of the glacier, past the end of the deep gorge called Floral pass. A small creek, flowing down the pass, joins the stream and skirts the glacier just below the mouth of a wild gorge on the side of the main valley. This stream once flowed along the border of the Lucia glacier when it was much higher than now, and began the excavation of a channel in the rock, which was retained after the surface of the glacier was lowered by melting. It still flows in a rock-cut channel for about a mile before descending to the border of the glacier as it exists at present. The geologist will see at once that this is a peculiar example of superimposed drainage. The gorge cut by the stream is a deep narrow trench with rough angular cliffs on either side, and is a good example of a water-cut cañon. When the Lucia glacier melts away and leaves the broad-bottomed valley clear of ice, the deep narrow gorge on its western side, running parallel with its longer axes, but a thousand feet or more above its bottom, will remain as one of the evidences of a former ice invasion.
During our reconnoissance we turned back at the margin of the second river, but a day or two later reached the same point with the camp hands and camping outfit, and, placing a rope from bank to bank, effected a crossing. Our next camp was in Floral pass. From there we occupied a topographical station on the summit of the Floral hills, and made another reconnoissance ahead, across the Hayden glacier,28 to the next mountain spur.
28 Named in honor of the late Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden, founder of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories.
Floral pass, like so many of the topographical features examined during the recent expedition, has a peculiar history. It is a comparatively low-grade gorge leading directly across the end of an angular mountain range forming one of the spurs of Mount Cook. The position of the pass was determined by an east-and-west fault and by the erosion of soft shales turned up on edge along the line of displacement. At its head it is shut in by the Hayden glacier, which flows past it and forms a wall of ice about two hundred feet high. The water flowing out from beneath the side of the glacier forms a muddy creek, which finds its way over a bowlder-covered bed in the bottom of the gorge to the border of Lucia glacier. Along the sides of the gorge there are many terraces, which record a complicated history. Evenly stratified clays near its lower end, adjacent to the Lucia glacier, show that it was at one time occupied in part by a lake. Above the lacustral beds there are water-worn deposits, indicating that at a later date the gorge was filled from side to side by moraines and coarse stream deposits several hundred feet thick. These were excavated, and portions were left clinging to the hill-sides, forming the terraces of to-day. Diverse slopes in the terraces suggest that the drainage may at times have been reversed, according as the Lucia or the Hayden glacier was the higher.
The routes between our various camps, scattered along between Yakutat bay and Blossom island, were traversed several times by every member of the party. To traverse the same trail several times with heavy loads, and perhaps in rain and mist, is disheartening work which I will spare the reader the effort of following even in fancy.
From our camp in Floral pass another reconnoissance ahead was made by Mr. Kerr and myself, as already mentioned. These advances, each one of which told us something new, were the most interesting portions of our journey. The little adventures and experiences of each advance were reported and talked over when we rejoined our companions around the camp-fire at night, and were received with gratifying interest by the men.
A view of the Hayden glacier from the Floral hills showed us that it differed from any of the glaciers previously traversed. Its surface, where we planned to cross it, was free of débris except along the margins and also near the center, where we could distinguish a light medial moraine. Farther southward, near the terminus of the glacier, its surface from side to side was buried beneath a sheet of stones and dirt. As in many other instances, the débris on the lower portion of the glacier has been concentrated at the surface, owing to the melting of the ice, so as to form a continuous sheet.
Early one morning, while traveling over the torrent-swept bowlders in the stream-bed on our way up Floral pass, we were a little startled at seeing the head of a bear just visible through the flowers fringing the bank. Before a shot could be fired, he vanished, and remained perfectly quiet among the bushes for several minutes. But a trembling of the branches at length betrayed his presence, and a few minutes later he came out in full view, his yellow-brown coat giving him the appearance of a huge dog. Standing on a rounded mound he looked inquiringly down the valley, with his shaggy side in full view. I fired—but missed my aim. The unsuccessful hunter always has an excuse for his failure; I had never before used the rifle I carried, and the hair-trigger with which it was provided deceived me. Fortunately for the bear, and probably still more fortunately for me, the bullet went far above the mark. The huge beast vanished again, although the vegetation was not dense, and left us wondering how such a large animal could disappear so quickly and so completely in such an open region. On searching for his tracks, we found that he had traversed for a few rods the plant-covered terrace on which he was first discovered, and then escaped up a lateral gorge to a broader terrace above.