ns:

"We saw it; we saw it! He sent us to His most glorious exhibition.
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"

Two or three inspiring days followed. Muir must climb the most
accessible of the mountains. My weak shoulders forbade me to ascend more
than two or three thousand feet, but Muir went more than twice as high.
Upon two or three of the glaciers he climbed, although the speed of
these icy streams was so great and their "frozen cataracts" were so
frequent, that it was difficult to ascend them.

I began to understand Muir's whole new theory, which theory made Tyndall
pronounce him the greatest authority on glacial action the world had
seen. He pointed out to me the mechanical laws that governed those
slow-moving, resistless streams; how they carved their own valleys; how
the lower valley and glacier were often the resultant in size and
velocity of the two or three glaciers that now formed the branches of
the main glaciers; how the harder strata of rock resisted and turned the
masses of ice; how the steely ploughshares were often inserted into
softer leads and a whole mountain split apart as by a wedge.

Muir would explore all day long, often rising hours before daylight and
disappearing among the mountains, not coming to camp until after night
had fallen. Again and again the Indians said that he was lost; but I had
no fears for him. When he would return to camp he was so full of his
discoveries and of the new facts garnered that he would talk until long
into the night, almost forgetting to eat.

Returning down the bay, we passed the largest glacier of all, which was
to bear Muir's name. It was then fully a mile and a half in width, and
the perpendicular face of it towered from four to seven hundred feet
above the surface of the water. The ice masses were breaking off so fast
that we were forced to put off far from the face of the glacier. The
great waves threatened constantly to dash us against the sharp points of
the icebergs. We wished to land and scale the glacier from the eastern
side. We rowed our canoe about half a mile from the edge of the glacier,
but, attempting to land, were forced hastily to put off again. A great
wave, formed by the masses of ice breaking off into the water,
threatened to dash our loaded canoe against the boulders on the beach.
Rowing further away, we tried it again and again, with the same result.
As soon as we neared the shore another huge wave would threaten
destruction. We w