L. Frank Baum - "The Lost Princess of Oz"

Rabindranath Tagore - "The Gardener"

Rolf Boldrewood [Thomas Alexander Browne] (1826 1915) - "Shearing In The Riverina, New South Wales"

G. K. Chesterton - "The Wisdom of Father Brown"

Travels in Alaska

J >> John Muir >> Travels in Alaska




Making our way through the crowded bergs to the extreme head of the
fiord, we entered the mouth of the river, but were soon compelled to
turn back on account of the strength of the current. The Taku River
is a large stream, nearly a mile wide at the mouth, and, like the
Stickeen, Chilcat, and Chilcoot, draws its sources from far inland,
crossing the mountain-chain from the interior through a majestic
canyon, and draining a multitude of glaciers on its way.

The Taku Indians, like the Chilcats, with a keen appreciation of the
advantages of their position for trade, hold possession of the river
and compel the Indians of the interior to accept their services as
middle-men, instead of allowing them to trade directly with the
whites.

When we were baffled in our attempt to ascend the river, the day was
nearly done, and we began to seek a camp-ground. After sailing two or
three miles along the left side of the fiord, we were so fortunate as
to find a small nook described by the two Indians, where firewood was
abundant, and where we could drag our canoe up the bank beyond reach
of the berg-waves. Here we were safe, with a fine outlook across the
fiord to the great glaciers and near enough to see the birth of the
icebergs and the wonderful commotion they make, and hear their wild,
roaring rejoicing. The sunset sky seemed to have been painted for
this one mountain mansion, fitting it like a ceiling. After the fiord
was in shadow the level sunbeams continued to pour through the miles
of bergs with ravishing beauty, reflecting and refracting the purple
light like cut crystal. Then all save the tips of the highest became
dead white. These, too, were speedily quenched, the glowing points
vanishing like stars sinking beneath the horizon. And after the
shadows had crept higher, submerging the glaciers and the ridges
between them, the divine alpenglow still lingered on their highest
fountain peaks as they stood transfigured in glorious array. Now the
last of the twilight purple has vanished, the stars begin to shine,
and all trace of the day is gone. Looking across the fiord the water
seems perfectly black, and the two great glaciers are seen stretching
dim and ghostly into the shadowy mountains now darkly massed against
the starry sky.

Next morning it was raining hard, everything looked dismal, and on
the way down the fiord a growling head wind battered the rain in our
faces, but we held doggedly on and by 10 A.M. got out of the fiord
into Stephens Passage. A breeze sprung up in our favor that swept
us bravely on across the passage and around the end of Admiralty
Island by dark. We camped in a boggy hollow on a bluff among scraggy,
usnea-bearded spruces. The rain, bitterly cold and driven by a stormy
wind, thrashed us well while we floundered in the stumpy bog trying
to make a fire and supper.

When daylight came we found our camp-ground a very savage place. How
we reached it and established ourselves in the thick darkness it
would be difficult to tell. We crept along the shore a few miles
against strong head winds, then hoisted sail and steered straight
across Lynn Canal to the mainland, which we followed without great
difficulty, the wind having moderated toward evening. Near the
entrance to Icy Strait we met a Hoona who had seen us last year and
who seemed glad to see us. He gave us two salmon, and we made him
happy with tobacco and then pushed on and camped near Sitka Jack's
deserted village.

Though the wind was still ahead next morning, we made about twenty
miles before sundown and camped on the west end of Farewell Island.
We bumped against a hidden rock and sprung a small leak that was
easily stopped with resin. The salmon-berries were ripe. While
climbing a bluff for a view of our course, I discovered moneses, one
of my favorites, and saw many well-traveled deer-trails, though the
island is cut off from the mainland and other islands by at least
five or six miles of icy, berg-encumbered water.

We got under way early next day,--a gray, cloudy morning with rain
and wind. Fair and head winds were about evenly balanced throughout
the day. Tides run fast here, like great rivers. We rowed and paddled
around Point Wimbledon against both wind and tide, creeping close to
the feet of the huge, bold rocks of the north wall of Cross Sound,
which here were very steep and awe-inspiring as the heavy swells from
the open sea coming in past Cape Spencer dashed white against them,
tossing our frail canoe up and down lightly as a feather. The point
reached by vegetation shows that the surf dashes up to a height of
about seventy-five or a hundred feet. We were awe-stricken and began
to fear that we might be upset should the ocean waves rise still
higher. But little Stickeen seemed to enjoy the storm, and gazed at
the foam-wreathed cliffs like a dreamy, comfortable tourist admiring
a sunset. We reached the mouth of Taylor Bay about two or three
o'clock in the afternoon, when we had a view of the open ocean before
we entered the bay. Many large bergs from Glacier Bay were seen
drifting out to sea past Cape Spencer. We reached the head of the
fiord now called Taylor Bay at five o'clock and camped near an
immense glacier with a front about three miles wide stretching across
from wall to wall. No icebergs are discharged from it, as it is
separated from the water of the fiord at high tide by a low, smooth
mass of outspread, overswept moraine material, netted with torrents
and small shallow rills from the glacier-front, with here and there
a lakelet, and patches of yellow mosses and garden spots bright with
epilobium, saxifrage, grass-tufts, sedges, and creeping willows on
the higher ground. But only the mosses were sufficiently abundant
to make conspicuous masses of color to relieve the dull slaty gray
of the glacial mud and gravel. The front of the glacier, like
all those which do not discharge icebergs, is rounded like a
brow, smooth-looking in general views, but cleft and furrowed,
nevertheless, with chasms and grooves in which the light glows and
shimmers in glorious beauty. The granite walls of the fiord, though
very high, are not deeply sculptured. Only a few deep side canyons
with trees, bushes, grassy and flowery spots interrupt their massive
simplicity, leaving but few of the cliffs absolutely sheer and bare
like those of Yosemite, Sum Dum, or Taku. One of the side canyons
is on the left side of the fiord, the other on the right, the
tributaries of the former leading over by a narrow tide-channel to
the bay next to the eastward, and by a short portage over into a
lake into which pours a branch glacier from the great glacier. Still
another branch from the main glacier turns to the right. Counting all
three of these separate fronts, the width of this great Taylor Bay
Glacier must be about seven or eight miles.

While camp was being made, Hunter Joe climbed the eastern wall in
search of wild mutton, but found none. He fell in with a brown bear,
however, and got a shot at it, but nothing more. Mr. Young and I
crossed the moraine slope, splashing through pools and streams up to
the ice-wall, and made the interesting discovery that the glacier
had been advancing of late years, ploughing up and shoving forward
moraine soil that had been deposited long ago, and overwhelming and
grinding and carrying away the forests on the sides and front of the
glacier. Though not now sending off icebergs, the front is probably
far below sea-level at the bottom, thrust forward beneath its
wave-washed moraine.

Along the base of the mountain-wall we found abundance of
salmon-berries, the largest measuring an inch and a half in diameter.
Strawberries, too, are found hereabouts. Some which visiting Indians
brought us were as fine in size and color and flavor as any I ever
saw anywhere. After wandering and wondering an hour or two, admiring
the magnificent rock and crystal scenery about us, we returned to
camp at sundown, planning a grand excursion for the morrow.

I set off early the morning of August 30 before any one else in camp
had stirred, not waiting for breakfast, but only eating a piece of
bread. I had intended getting a cup of coffee, but a wild storm was
blowing and calling, and I could not wait. Running out against the
rain-laden gale and turning to catch my breath, I saw that the
minister's little dog had left his bed in the tent and was coming
boring through the storm, evidently determined to follow me. I told
him to go back, that such a day as this had nothing for him.

"Go back," I shouted, "and get your breakfast." But he simply stood
with his head down, and when I began to urge my way again, looking
around, I saw he was still following me. So I at last told him to
come on if he must and gave him a piece of the bread I had in my
pocket.

Instead of falling, the rain, mixed with misty shreds of clouds, was
flying in level sheets, and the wind was roaring as I had never heard
wind roar before. Over the icy levels and over the woods, on the
mountains, over the jagged rocks and spires and chasms of the glacier
it boomed and moaned and roared, filling the fiord in even, gray,
structureless gloom, inspiring and awful. I first struggled up in the
face of the blast to the east end of the ice-wall, where a patch of
forest had been carried away by the glacier when it was advancing. I
noticed a few stumps well out on the moraine flat, showing that its
present bare, raw condition was not the condition of fifty or a
hundred years ago. In front of this part of the glacier there is a
small moraine lake about half a mile in length, around the margin of
which are a considerable number of trees standing knee-deep, and of
course dead. This also is a result of the recent advance of the ice.

Pushing up through the ragged edge of the woods on the left margin of
the glacier, the storm seemed to increase in violence, so that it was
difficult to draw breath in facing it; therefore I took shelter back
of a tree to enjoy it and wait, hoping that it would at last somewhat
abate. Here the glacier, descending over an abrupt rock, falls
forward in grand cascades, while a stream swollen by the rain was now
a torrent,--wind, rain, ice-torrent, and water-torrent in one grand
symphony.

At length the storm seemed to abate somewhat, and I took off my heavy
rubber boots, with which I had waded the glacial streams on the flat,
and laid them with my overcoat on a log, where I might find them on
my way back, knowing I would be drenched anyhow, and firmly tied my
mountain shoes, tightened my belt, shouldered my ice-axe, and, thus
free and ready for rough work, pushed on, regardless as possible of
mere rain. Making my way up a steep granite slope, its projecting
polished bosses encumbered here and there by boulders and the ground
and bruised ruins of the ragged edge of the forest that had been
uprooted by the glacier during its recent advance, I traced the side
of the glacier for two or three miles, finding everywhere evidence of
its having encroached on the woods, which here run back along its
edge for fifteen or twenty miles. Under the projecting edge of this
vast ice-river I could see down beneath it to a depth of fifty feet
or so in some places, where logs and branches were being crushed to
pulp, some of it almost fine enough for paper, though most of it
stringy and coarse.

After thus tracing the margin of the glacier for three or four miles,
I chopped steps and climbed to the top, and as far as the eye could
reach, the nearly level glacier stretched indefinitely away in the
gray cloudy sky, a prairie of ice. The wind was now almost moderate,
though rain continued to fall, which I did not mind, but a tendency
to mist in the drooping draggled clouds made me hesitate about
attempting to cross to the opposite shore. Although the distance was
only six or seven miles, no traces at this time could be seen of the
mountains on the other side, and in case the sky should grow darker,
as it seemed inclined to do, I feared that when I got out of sight of
land and perhaps into a maze of crevasses I might find difficulty in
winning a way back.

Lingering a while and sauntering about in sight of the shore, I found
this eastern side of the glacier remarkably free from large
crevasses. Nearly all I met were so narrow I could step across them
almost anywhere, while the few wide ones were easily avoided by going
up or down along their sides to where they narrowed. The dismal cloud
ceiling showed rifts here and there, and, thus encouraged, I struck
out for the west shore, aiming to strike it five or six miles above
the front wall, cautiously taking compass bearings at short intervals
to enable me to find my way back should the weather darken again with
mist or rain or snow. The structure lines of the glacier itself were,
however, my main guide. All went well. I came to a deeply furrowed
section about two miles in width where I had to zigzag in long,
tedious tacks and make narrow doublings, tracing the edges of wide
longitudinal furrows and chasms until I could find a bridge
connecting their sides, oftentimes making the direct distance ten
times over. The walking was good of its kind, however, and by dint of
patient doubling and axe-work on dangerous places, I gained the
opposite shore in about three hours, the width of the glacier at this
point being about seven miles. Occasionally, while making my way, the
clouds lifted a little, revealing a few bald, rough mountains sunk to
the throat in the broad, icy sea which encompassed them on all sides,
sweeping on forever and forever as we count time, wearing them away,
giving them the shape they are destined to take when in the fullness
of time they shall be parts of new landscapes.

Ere I lost sight of the east-side mountains, those on the west came
in sight, so that holding my course was easy, and, though making
haste, I halted for a moment to gaze down into the beautiful pure
blue crevasses and to drink at the lovely blue wells, the most
beautiful of all Nature's water-basins, or at the rills and streams
outspread over the ice-land prairie, never ceasing to admire their
lovely color and music as they glided and swirled in their blue
crystal channels and potholes, and the rumbling of the moulins, or
mills, where streams poured into blue-walled pits of unknown depth,
some of them as regularly circular as if bored with augers.
Interesting, too, were the cascades over blue cliffs, where streams
fell into crevasses or slid almost noiselessly down slopes so smooth
and frictionless their motion was concealed. The round or oval wells,
however, from one to ten feet wide, and from one to twenty or thirty
feet deep, were perhaps the most beautiful of all, the water so pure
as to be almost invisible. My widest views did not probably exceed
fifteen miles, the rain and mist making distances seem greater.

On reaching the farther shore and tracing it a few miles to
northward, I found a large portion of the glacier-current sweeping
out westward in a bold and beautiful curve around the shoulder of a
mountain as if going direct to the open sea. Leaving the main trunk,
it breaks into a magnificent uproar of pinnacles and spires and
up-heaving, splashing wave-shaped masses, a crystal cataract
incomparably greater and wilder than a score of Niagaras.

Tracing its channel three or four miles, I found that it fell into a
lake, which it fills with bergs. The front of this branch of the
glacier is about three miles wide. I first took the lake to be the
head of an arm of the sea, but, going down to its shore and tasting
it, I found it fresh, and by my aneroid perhaps less than a hundred
feet above sea-level. It is probably separated from the sea only by a
moraine dam. I had not time to go around its shores, as it was now
near five o'clock and I was about fifteen miles from camp, and I had
to make haste to recross the glacier before dark, which would come on
about eight o'clock. I therefore made haste up to the main glacier,
and, shaping my course by compass and the structure lines of the ice,
set off from the land out on to the grand crystal prairie again. All
was so silent and so concentred, owing to the low dragging mist, the
beauty close about me was all the more keenly felt, though tinged
with a dim sense of danger, as if coming events were casting shadows.
I was soon out of sight of land, and the evening dusk that on cloudy
days precedes the real night gloom came stealing on and only ice was
in sight, and the only sounds, save the low rumbling of the mills and
the rattle of falling stones at long intervals, were the low,
terribly earnest moanings of the wind or distant waterfalls coming
through the thickening gloom. After two hours of hard work I came to
a maze of crevasses of appalling depth and width which could not be
passed apparently either up or down. I traced them with firm nerve
developed by the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on
dizzy edges after cutting footholds, taking wide crevasses at a grand
leap at once frightful and inspiring. Many a mile was thus traveled,
mostly up and down the glacier, making but little real headway,
running much of the time as the danger of having to pass the night on
the ice became more and more imminent. This I could do, though with
the weather and my rain-soaked condition it would be trying at best.
In treading the mazes of this crevassed section I had frequently to
cross bridges that were only knife-edges for twenty or thirty feet,
cutting off the sharp tops and leaving them flat so that little
Stickeen could follow me. These I had to straddle, cutting off the
top as I progressed and hitching gradually ahead like a boy riding a
rail fence. All this time the little dog followed me bravely, never
hesitating on the brink of any crevasse that I had jumped, but now
that it was becoming dark and the crevasses became more troublesome,
he followed close at my heels instead of scampering far and wide,
where the ice was at all smooth, as he had in the forenoon. No land
was now in sight. The mist fell lower and darker and snow began to
fly. I could not see far enough up and down the glacier to judge how
best to work out of the bewildering labyrinth, and how hard I tried
while there was yet hope of reaching camp that night! a hope which
was fast growing dim like the sky. After dark, on such ground, to
keep from freezing, I could only jump up and down until morning on a
piece of flat ice between the crevasses, dance to the boding music
of the winds and waters, and as I was already tired and hungry I
would be in bad condition for such ice work. Many times I was put to
my mettle, but with a firm-braced nerve, all the more unflinching as
the dangers thickened, I worked out of that terrible ice-web, and
with blood fairly up Stickeen and I ran over common danger without
fatigue. Our very hardest trial was in getting across the very last
of the sliver bridges. After examining the first of the two widest
crevasses, I followed its edge half a mile or so up and down and
discovered that its narrowest spot was about eight feet wide, which
was the limit of what I was able to jump. Moreover, the side I was
on--that is, the west side--was about a foot higher than the other,
and I feared that in case I should be stopped by a still wider
impassable crevasse ahead that I would hardly be able to take back
that jump from its lower side. The ice beyond, however, as far as I
could see it, looked temptingly smooth. Therefore, after carefully
making a socket for my foot on the rounded brink, I jumped, but found
that I had nothing to spare and more than ever dreaded having to
retrace my way. Little Stickeen jumped this, however, without
apparently taking a second look at it, and we ran ahead joyfully over
smooth, level ice, hoping we were now leaving all danger behind us.
But hardly had we gone a hundred or two yards when to our dismay we
found ourselves on the very widest of all the longitudinal crevasses
we had yet encountered. It was about forty feet wide. I ran anxiously
up the side of it to northward, eagerly hoping that I could get
around its head, but my worst fears were realized when at a distance
of about a mile or less it ran into the crevasse that I had just
jumped. I then ran down the edge for a mile or more below the point
where I had first met it, and found that its lower end also united
with the crevasse I had jumped, showing dismally that we were on an
island two or three hundred yards wide and about two miles long and
the only way of escape from this island was by turning back and
jumping again that crevasse which I dreaded, or venturing ahead
across the giant crevasse by the very worst of the sliver bridges I
had ever seen. It was so badly weathered and melted down that it
formed a knife-edge, and extended across from side to side in a low,
drooping curve like that made by a loose rope attached at each end at
the same height. But the worst difficulty was that the ends of the
down-curving sliver were attached to the sides at a depth of about
eight or ten feet below the surface of the glacier. Getting down to
the end of the bridge, and then after crossing it getting up the
other side, seemed hardly possible. However, I decided to dare the
dangers of the fearful sliver rather than to attempt to retrace my
steps. Accordingly I dug a low groove in the rounded edge for my
knees to rest in and, leaning over, began to cut a narrow foothold on
the steep, smooth side. When I was doing this, Stickeen came up
behind me, pushed his head over my shoulder, looked into the
crevasses and along the narrow knife-edge, then turned and looked in
my face, muttering and whining as if trying to say, "Surely you are
not going down there." I said, "Yes, Stickeen, this is the only way."
He then began to cry and ran wildly along the rim of the crevasse,
searching for a better way, then, returning baffled, of course, he
came behind me and lay down and cried louder and louder.

After getting down one step I cautiously stooped and cut another and
another in succession until I reached the point where the sliver was
attached to the wall. There, cautiously balancing, I chipped down the
upcurved end of the bridge until I had formed a small level platform
about a foot wide, then, bending forward, got astride of the end of
the sliver, steadied myself with my knees, then cut off the top of
the sliver, hitching myself forward an inch or two at a time, leaving
it about four inches wide for Stickeen. Arrived at the farther end of
the sliver, which was about seventy-five feet long, I chipped another
little platform on its upcurved end, cautiously rose to my feet, and
with infinite pains cut narrow notch steps and finger-holds in the
wall and finally got safely across. All this dreadful time poor
little Stickeen was crying as if his heart was broken, and when I
called to him in as reassuring a voice as I could muster, he only
cried the louder, as if trying to say that he never, never could get
down there--the only time that the brave little fellow appeared to
know what danger was. After going away as if I was leaving him, he
still howled and cried without venturing to try to follow me.
Returning to the edge of the crevasse, I told him that I must go,
that he could come if he only tried, and finally in despair he
hushed his cries, slid his little feet slowly down into my footsteps
out on the big sliver, walked slowly and cautiously along the sliver
as if holding his breath, while the snow was falling and the wind was
moaning and threatening to blow him off. When he arrived at the foot
of the slope below me, I was kneeling on the brink ready to assist
him in case he should be unable to reach the top. He looked up along
the row of notched steps I had made, as if fixing them in his mind,
then with a nervous spring he whizzed up and passed me out on to the
level ice, and ran and cried and barked and rolled about fairly
hysterical in the sudden revulsion from the depth of despair to
triumphant joy. I tried to catch him and pet him and tell him how
good and brave he was, but he would not be caught. He ran round and
round, swirling like autumn leaves in an eddy, lay down and rolled
head over heels. I told him we still had far to go and that we must
now stop all nonsense and get off the ice before dark. I knew by the
ice-lines that every step was now taking me nearer the shore and soon
it came in sight. The head-land four or five miles back from the
front, covered with spruce trees, loomed faintly but surely through
the mist and light fall of snow not more than two miles away. The ice
now proved good all the way across, and we reached the lateral
moraine just at dusk, then with trembling limbs, now that the danger
was over, we staggered and stumbled down the bouldery edge of the
glacier and got over the dangerous rocks by the cascades while yet a
faint light lingered. We were safe, and then, too, came limp
weariness such as no ordinary work ever produces, however hard it may
be. Wearily we stumbled down through the woods, over logs and brush
and roots, devil's-clubs pricking us at every faint blundering
tumble. At last we got out on the smooth mud slope with only a mile
of slow but sure dragging of weary limbs to camp. The Indians had
been firing guns to guide me and had a fine supper and fire ready,
though fearing they would be compelled to seek us in the morning, a
care not often applied to me. Stickeen and I were too tired to eat
much, and, strange to say, too tired to sleep. Both of us, springing
up in the night again and again, fancied we were still on that
dreadful ice bridge in the shadow of death.

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