Next to the Muir, the largest of the glaciers enters the bay at its extreme northwestern extension. Its broad, majestic current, fed by unnumbered tributaries, is divided at the front by an island, and from its long, blue wall the icebergs plunge and roar in one eternal storm, sounding on day and night, winter and summer, and from century to century. Five or six glaciers of the first class discharge into the bay, the number varying as the several outlets of the ice-fields are regarded as distinct glaciers, or one. About an equal number of the second class descend with broad, imposing currents to the level of the bay without entering it to discharge bergs; while the tributaries of these and the smaller glaciers are innumerable.
FACE OF MUIR GLACIER, ALASKA.
Mr. John Muir, the explorer of Muir Glacier, thus describes his visit to that wonderful ice-swept region: “The clouds cleared away on the morning of the 27th, and we had glorious views of the ice-rivers pouring down from their spacious fountains on either hand, and of the grand assemblage of mountains, immaculate in their robes of new snow, and bathed and transfigured in the most impressively lovely sunrise light I ever beheld. Memorable, too, was the starry splendor of a night spent on the east side of the bay, in front of two large glaciers north of the Muir. Venus seemed half as big as the Moon, while the berg-covered bay, glowing and sparkling with responsive light, seemed another sky of equal glory. Shortly after three o’clock in the morning, I climbed the dividing ridge between the two glaciers, 2,000 feet above camp, for the sake of the night views; and how great was the enjoyment in the solemn silence between those two radiant skies no words may tell.”
The destructive effects of glaciers and the extent of their ravages have been made the subject of many interesting essays by distinguished scientists, but nowhere has it been so interestingly and understandingly treated as by Dr. Wright in the Edinburgh Review, on the “Ice Age of North America.” The monograph, much abbreviated, is as follows:
“It is not more than 10,000 years ago since the whole of North America and Northern Europe emerged from beneath a deluge of ice which seems to have destroyed the aboriginal inhabitants as remorselessly as Noah’s flood.
“The chipped flint implement-makers perished with their contemporaries, the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, and the sabre-toothed tiger, and left the globe to be repeopled by the polished stone-working or Neolithic progenitors of its actual inhabitants. The gap between the two races is conspicuous, and has not yet been archæologically bridged. A catastrophe is indicated; and a catastrophe by water. This is the conclusion of science; how singularly it harmonizes with the biblical narrative is almost superfluous to point out.”
VILLAGE OF KASA-AN, ALASKA.—It will doubtless be a surprise to many persons not familiar with the conditions of the Alaskan Indians to observe that their houses are usually quite substantially built of frame or wood. We generally think of Indians as living in wigwams or huts, but in the case of the Alaskans they were for many years previous to the purchase of that country by our government under the influence of Russia, and are therefore partly civilized and somewhat advanced in the modern ways of living. But they still retain their old superstition, as shown by the totem poles in front of their houses. These poles are carved and mounted with rude representations of birds, beasts and reptiles, which are intended to give notice to the public that the spirits of the deceased ancestors of the occupants of the houses have entered into the living counterparts of these rude carvings, and that any indignities offered to them will be vigorously and promptly resented.