o be let
alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor of his
hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature. His strength of
character lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills, and as
young, and as wild. I never tired of looking into them: it was like
looking into a landscape; but they were small and rather deep-set, and
had no explaining lines around them to give out particulars. I was
accustomed to look into the faces of plants and animals, and I watched
the little sphinx more and more keenly as an interesting study. But
there is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our
lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it
is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made
perfect.

After exploring the Sumdum and Tahkoo fiords and their glaciers, we
sailed through Stephen's Passage into Lynn Canal and thence through Icy
Strait into Cross Sound, searching for unexplored inlets leading toward
the great fountain ice-fields of the Fairweather Range. Here, while the
tide was in our favor, we were accompanied by a fleet of icebergs
drifting out to the ocean from Glacier Bay. Slowly we paddled around
Vancouver's Point, Wimbledon, our frail canoe tossed like a feather on
the massive heaving swells coming in past Cape Spenser. For miles the
sound is bounded by precipitous mural cliffs, which, lashed with
wave-spray and their heads hidden in clouds, looked terribly threatening
and stern. Had our canoe been crushed or upset we could have made no
landing here, for the cliffs, as high as those of Yosemite, sink sheer
into deep water. Eagerly we scanned the wall on the north side for the
first sign of an opening fiord or harbor, all of us anxious except
Stickeen, who dozed in peace or gazed dreamily at the tremendous
precipices when he heard us talking about them. At length we made the
joyful discovery of the mouth of the inlet now called "Taylor Bay," and
about five o'clock reached the head of it and encamped in a spruce grove
near the front of a large glacier.

While camp was being made, Joe the hunter climbed the mountain wall on
the east side of the fiord in pursuit of wild goats, while Mr. Young and
I went to the glacier. We found that it is separated from the waters of
the inlet by a tide-washed moraine, and extends, an abrupt barrier, all
the way across from wall to wall of the inlet, a distance of about three
miles. But our most inte