the longest of these, Endicott Arm. We
entered the bay at night, caught again by the darkness, and groped our
way uncertainly. We probably would have spent most of the night trying
to find a landing place had not the gleam of a fire greeted us, flashing
through the trees, disappearing as an island intervened, and again
opening up with its fair ray as we pushed on. An hour's steady paddling
brought us to the camp of some Cassiar miners--my friends. They were
here at the foot of a glacier stream, from the bed of which they had
been sluicing gold. Just now they were in hard luck, as the constant
rains had swelled the glacial stream, burst through their wing-dams,
swept away their sluice-boxes and destroyed the work of the summer.
Strong men of the wilderness as they were, they were not discouraged,
but were discussing plans for prospecting new places and trying it again
here next summer. Hot coffee and fried venison emphasized their welcome,
and we in return could give them a little news from the outside world,
from which they had been shut off completely for months.

Muir called us before daylight the next morning. He had been up since
two or three o'clock, "studying the night effects," he said, listening
to the roaring and crunching of the charging ice as it came out of
Endicott Arm, spreading out like the skirmish line of an army and
grinding against the rocky point just below us. He had even attempted a
moonlight climb up the sloping face of a high promontory with Stickeen
as his companion, but was unable to get to the top, owing to the
smoothness of the granite rock. It was newly glaciated--this whole
region--and the hard rubbing ice-tools had polished the granite like a
monument. A hasty meal and we were off.

"We'll find it this time," said Muir.

A miner crawled out of his blankets and came to see us start. "If it's
scenery you're after," he said, "ten miles up the bay there's the nicest
canyon you ever saw. It has no name that I know of, but it is sure some
scenery."

The long, straight fiord stretched southeast into the heart of the
granite range, its funnel shape producing tremendous tides. When the
tide was ebbing that charging phalanx of ice was irresistible, storming
down the canyon with race-horse speed; no canoe could stem that current.
We waited until the turn, then getting inside the outer fleet of
icebergs we paddled up with the flood tide. Mile after mile we raced
past those smooth mountain shoulde