Alexander Badlam, in his “Wonders of Alaska,” p. 42, quotes Professor Muir himself as saying that the front and brow of the glacier were “dashed and sculptured into a maze of yawning chasm, ravines, cañons, crevasses, and, a bewildering chaos of architectural forms, beautiful beyond the measure of description, and so bewildering in their beauty as to almost make the spectator believe he was revelling in a dream.” “There were,” he said, “great clusters of glistening spires, gables, obelisks, monoliths, and castles, standing out boldly against the sky, with bastion and mural, surmounted by fretted cornice, and every interstice and chasm reflecting a sheen of scintillating light and deep-blue shadow, making a combination of color, dazzling, startling, and enchanting.”
The next sensation in store for the tourist is the climb to the top of the glacier. All the row-boats were lowered, and about a dozen passengers in each, armed with alpenstocks, were ferried in successive groups from the ship to the eastern beach, a distance of perhaps half a mile, instructions being given to each steersman to keep a sharp lookout for falling icebergs. And here your trouble commences unless you are well advised. The ascent is exceedingly difficult; what looks like a mountain of rock over which you must wend your way to the ice-fields, is really a mountain of ice covered by a layer of slimy mud, crusted with pieces of flinty granite, standing up on end like broken bottle glass on top of a wall. I wore India-rubber high boots when I started, and I needed crutches before I finished. It may be chilly as you leave the ship, according as the sun may be out or in; if chilly, get your escort to carry an extra shawl for you to wrap yourself in when you row back to the ship; if the weather is bright and warm, clothe yourself lightly, for it grows warmer with the glare from the ice and the physical exertion. Be very careful where you step, and if you are wise follow in the footsteps of others; do not undertake to lead, else one foot may be trying to ascertain the depth of a quagmire and the other exploring a fissure.
After an ascent of perhaps two and a half miles, which seem more like ten, you will find yourself on the edge of a frozen sea, frozen, as it were, while in the throes of a tempest, a bay of storm-tossed waves solidified as by a signal; and this extends as far as the eye can reach up into the mountains towards the north, and several miles across to the hills upon the opposite shore. The ice is by no means clear or brilliant, on the contrary, its color is milky and its formation honey-combed, plastic, porous, and yielding to the tread; besides which it is besmeared with sediment from mountain thaws which have traversed its rifts, and disfigured by fallen logs and drift-wood.
I confess if I visited Muir Glacier a hundred times I should always remain on deck and watch the pyrotechnics of the façade rather than undergo the thankless fatigue of climbing to the top, which is infinitely more laborious than the ascent of Vesuvius on foot through the lava, or any work to be done on the trails of the Yosemite. To those who are willing to undertake it, however, I suggest that when they have ascended the first mile, which will bring them on a line with the top of the wall of the glacier, they should look back at their little tiny ship, floating like the “Maid of the Mist” beneath Niagara, to fully realize the immense proportions of the glacier.
It is said that persons have been missed and never again found who made this ascent, and I know that at least one case is authentic, that of a young clergyman, who, straying away from his companions, was never again seen, though the most diligent search was made for him by his friends and the ship’s crew. A slip into one of those crevasses which is covered by a thin coat of ice, means to be precipitated in an instant to a depth where no human aid can reach you. In fact, I would advise all who wish to preserve the impression of Muir Glacier in its pure, idealized, unsullied grandeur, to stay aboard and gaze on its beautiful face.
It is a Persian custom, after plucking the fruit, to tear it asunder in the middle, hand the sunny side to the friend and throw the other half away, the best portion being the only part good enough for those they love. It is my duty to present to you the better half of the glacier and to cast away the other. Tired, footsore, and muddy, we were all early in bed, and while dozing to sleep I was much impressed with the awful stillness of the hour; everybody had retired, not even the tread of the man on watch was heard, the very machinery was sleeping, but every now and then there was a splash and a report and an echo that brought with them the proof that the forces of nature were ever awake, and that what was, “is, and ever shall be, world without end.”
A SUMMER TRIP TO ALASKA.
JAMES A. HARRISON.
[Nature possesses no scenery more beautiful than that to be found on the Pacific coast of Washington and in the island region leading to north Alaska. And the description of it given below is well worth reproduction, for its poetic appreciation of this rich scenic route.]