from the sea. A forest, or the remnant of a forest, stands
between it and the water it is slowly but surely approaching. The fate
of this solemn wood is sealed. Anon the mightiest among these mighty
trees will fall like grain before the sickle of the reaper.

We are very near this glacier. We see all the wrinkles and fissures and
the deep discolorations. We see how the monstrous mass winds in and out
between the mountains, and crowds them on every side, and rubs their
skin off in spots, and leaves grooved lines, like high-water marks,
along the face of the cliffs; how it gathers as it goes, and grinds to
powder and to paste whatever comes within its reach, growing worse and
worse, and greedier and more rapacious as it creeps down into the
lowlands; so that when it reaches the sea, where it must end its course
and dissolve away, it will have covered itself with slime and confusion.
It will have left ruin and desolation in its track, but it will likewise
have cleft out a valley with walls polished like brass and a floor as
smooth as marble,--one that will be utilized in after ages, when it has
carpeted itself with green and tapestried its walls with vines. Surely
no other power on earth could have done the job so neatly.

One sees this work in process and in fresh completion in Alaska. The
bald islet yonder, with a surface as smooth as glass and with delicate
tracery along its polished sides--tracery that looks like etching upon
glass,--was modelled by glaciers not so many years ago: within the
century, some of them, perhaps. A glacier--probably the very glacier we
are seeking--follows this track and grinds them all into shape. Every
angle of action--of motion, shall I say?--is indelibly impressed upon
each and every rock here about; so all these northlands, from sea to
sea, the world over, have been laboriously licked into shape by the
irresistible tide of ice. Verily, the mills of the gods grind slowly,
but what a grist they grind!

Let me record an episode that occasioned no little excitement among the
passengers and crew of the _Ancon_. While we were picking our way among
the floating ice--and at a pretty good jog, too,--a dark body was seen
to fall from an open port, forward, into the sea. There was a splash and
a shriek as it passed directly under the wheel and disappeared in the
foam astern. "Man overboard!" was the cry that rang through the ship,
while we all rushed breathlessly to the after-rail. Among the seeth