ite, whose rounded top
and symmetrical shoulders were worn smooth as a Scotch monument by
grinding glaciers. Here was a great mountain slashed sheer across its
face, showing sharp edge and flat surface as if a slab of mountain size
had been sawed from it. Yonder again loomed a granite range whose huge
breasts were rounded and polished by the resistless sweep of that great
ice mass which Vancouver saw filling the bay.

Soon the icebergs were charging down upon us with the receding tide and
dressing up in compact phalanx when the tide arose. First would come
the advance guard of smaller bergs, with here and there a house-like
mass of cobalt blue with streaks of white and deeper recesses of
ultra-marine; here we passed an eight-sided, solid figure of
bottle-green ice; there towered an antlered formation like the horns of
a stag. Now we must use all caution and give the larger icebergs a wide
berth. They are treacherous creatures, these icebergs. You may be
paddling along by a peaceful looking berg, sleeping on the water as mild
and harmless as a lamb; when suddenly he will take a notion to turn
over, and up under your canoe will come a spear of ice, impaling it and
lifting it and its occupants skyward; then, turning over, down will go
canoe and men to the depths.

Our progress up the sixty miles of Glacier Bay was very slow. Three
nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of
the bay. All vegetation had disappeared; hardly a bunch of grass was
seen. The only signs of former life were the sodden and splintered
spruce and fir stumps that projected here and there from the bases of
huge gravel heaps, the moraine matter of the mighty ice mass that had
engulfed them. They told the story of great forests which had once
covered this whole region, until the great sea of ice of the second
glacial period overwhelmed and ground them down, and buried them deep
under its moraine matter. When we landed there were no level spots on
which to pitch our tent and no sandy beaches or gravel beds in which to
sink our tent-poles. I learned from Muir the gentle art of sleeping on a
rock, curled like a squirrel around a boulder.

We passed by Muir Glacier on the other side of the bay, seeking to
attain the extreme end of the great fiord. We estimated the distance by
the tide and our rate of rowing, tracing the shore-line and islands as
we went along and getting the points of the compass from our little
pocket instrume