[CHAPTER X.]
ON THE MUIR GLACIER.
“Away up here!”
It was Bessie who was speaking her thoughts aloud, as she leaned upon the rail of the good steamer Queen, and looked dreamily out over the blue water toward the mountains on the mainland.
“’Way up here, in Alaska! Really in Alaska! I can’t realize it!” she went on, turning to Rossiter Selborne, who was seated by her side. “Just think, that shore over there is a part of the pink patch in the map of North America, in the very upper left-hand corner. And I’ve come all the way from Boston, across the whole continent.”
It was indeed hard to realize that they were in those strange, far-away waters. Near the ship, porpoises leaped merrily through the sunlit spray of the waves. Now and then a queer-looking canoe shot by, paddled by dark-faced natives. On shore they could see only the pathless, boundless forest that stretched away for a thousand miles—an unbroken wilderness—towards the North Pole.
It was late on the afternoon in which they sailed from Juneau. Whatever anxieties had been harbored in Mr. Percival’s own mind, he had been at some pains to conceal them from the rest of the party. “The hunters had simply tramped farther than they had expected,” he said, “and found themselves too tired, after their first night in the woods, to reach the ship at the time agreed upon. For his part, he was glad they were not hurrying.”
Although Mrs. Percival was by no means reassured by these remarks, and her husband’s indifferent manner, she did allow herself to be somewhat comforted; and the younger folk easily fell in with his method of accounting for the prolonged absence of the boys. With real pleasure, therefore, all but one settled themselves to a thorough enjoyment of the new scenes constantly opening around them.
THE DAVIDSON GLACIER.