The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1886-11-18
AN ALASKA FOREST.
Enormous Trees Surrounded by vast
Fields of leo.

Enormous Trees Surrounded by VAST
Fields of Ice.
Wandering around neAr tho camp |
was struck with establishment at the
great size of she trees Of the forest in
to which we had crcpt. Within twenty
feet of our camp fire were two trees,
one of which measured twelve feet sew
en- inches and the other seventeen feet
in circumference ut the height of .
persons arm from the ground. The
latter had its thick shaggy bark stripped
off nearly to the ground, being n dead
tree and thus losing much in its meas
urement. About thirty yards from
camp was a tree that gave twenty-one
feet in circumference ut about SIX feet
from the ground. The most asionisl,-
ing part was that such n forest should
be found actually surrounded by ice
ten or twelve miles across in every di-
r~ect;on. OF course it is reasonable to
suppose that trees were here before the
ice, and that this forest probably once
connected with the forests of the great
Hat lands. Here was undoubted evil
dence that this small forest was being
oblitcrated rapidly by the advancing
front of the Guyot glacier, the i~oot-ice
grinding the huge trees into pulp and
splinters as surely as a quartz-crusller
grinds the rock into powder. Trees
five and six feet through were bent over
and splintored as if they were brush
while some of the fallen trunks were
split longitudinally into perfect kind
ling wootkr 1t was the mills of the gods
grinding, slowly, &c. Nor were they
grinding s%oovcry slowly, either. as one
could sceQby comparing them with 9th
err glacial action noir by. But II little
way off, probably II half-ml lie to mile
away was II small clump of woods,
into which the glacier in the
past had protruded, rs shown by
the fallen shattered trunks that lay
near the edge OF a small morainc, from
which the glacier had now retrcated n
great number of rods. Out from tho
bristling line of shattered tree trunks
piled over each other for nearly Or
fully a hundred yards all the spruce
trees were dead but still standing,
their whitened trunks and long. gaunt
limbs contrasting strangely and con-
s%picuously with the trees still covered
with foliage that formed their back
ground. These dead evergreens had
been actually killed by the proximity
to the ice without its touching them,
aad either by It's chilling influence,
kept up throughout the year for pro-
badly centuries, or the constant appli-
cation of the ice-watcr about their
roots preventing their growth; for along
this foot-ice there was always a marshy
stream of ice-watcr dra ming off to the
nearest muddy creek or rill. TIL $ was
true of the glacier foot not over fifty
yards from our camp in the forest. for
here we got our water for" cooking
purposes. but here, also, the ice of the
glacier had evidently come forward so
fast that the trees were rather killed
by direct crushing of their trunks and
limbs than by the slower n of the in
fluence of great masses of ice near by,
and it was possible to sit down on this
~foot-ice of the Guyot glacier, probably
ten to twenty feet tn elk at that point.
and ut the same time be under the
shade of u huge evergreen tree if a
person desired w such cooling in
fluences at the same time Thus |
came to the conclusion that the front
of this great glacier was like the
fingers of some huge radiating animal
p~rolonging themselves outward and re-
tracing again at long intervals, that
would require many human lives n
after the other to measure a single
stride and its backward flow.-Fred-
erick Schwatka in New Fork Times.