Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-06-01
A GIGANTIC ICEBERG.
A Glacier Forty Miles Long Which
Moves Sixty Feet in a Day.
PRESSING TOWARD THE OCEAN.
huge Masses Dropping From its Beetling,
Rugged Front.
JASPER, OHALCEDOEY AND PORPHYRY

The most notable of the glaciers in South
eastern Alaska is the MUIR named from
Prof John Muir, geologist Of some repu-
tation, since he gave the first uncolored de-
scription of it. It is 40 miles long, and back
on the land, in basin of the mountains
Being reinforced BY Is tributaries coming
down the glens from different points OF the
compass, it swells to an icy sea 25 miles in
diameter. Thence it moves with resistless
power, bearing rocks and long lines of
detritus on its billowy surface. Just before
Il reaches the bay it is compressed by two
sentinel mountains into and is forced through
o gorge one mile in width.
Emerging from this narrow gateway it
moves on, at the rate of 40 to 60 feet day,
to the waters whence it originally came,
buttressing the bay with perpendicular
wall 800 feet high, 800 feet Of ultramarine
crystals tipped with purest white being
above the surface, and, being pushed be-
yond its support in the underlying rock,
q battle begins between cohesion and
gravity. The latter force always prevails,
and vast masses break from the glacial
torrent with the combined crash of falling
walls and heavy thunder, q tumble into the
bay with q dash and @ shock that agitates
the waters miles away, making navigation
perilous TO craft of all sizes. The almost
deafening roar made when these masses are
rent away, the splashing baptism they re-
eeive in their fall and the leaping waters
are lively witnesses to the birth Of an ice
berg, which henceforth, as an Independent
existence, goes on its mission OF girding the
IL ifc fo11anS and 0f
soaring nsyigstors.
A WONDERFUL APPARITIoN.
While the ship was resting unmoored near
the front of this icy barrier, we were startled
by the sudden appearance of a mass of dark
crystal, vastly larger than our own Ship
shooting up from the depths and tossing our
steamer as if it were an egg-shell. As the
vessel careened, the frightened passengers
were sent whirling against her, over chairs.
or PROSTATE upon the deck. This strange
visitor had doubtless been broken off from
the roots of the icy mountain, hundreds Of
feet below the surface, and hence had unex-
pectedly appeared upon the scene. Had it
struck the ship fairly nothing but miracle
could have saved us.
Having recovered somewhat from our
dumb amazement, about 20 of us were sent |
on shore in the captains gig, Landing |
some distance below the ice wall, we climbed |
20 feet up lateral moraine, crawIed shoe |
deep in wet gravel down into the valley of
q glacier, mud-covered with shingle just |
deep enough to hide the creamy pools; |
slipped PROSTATE on the ice made treacher- |
ous BY q thin disguise of detritus, and ]
barked our shins and cut our shoes on the I
sharp angular blocks of granite and basalt |
strewn for two miles in great profusion |
along our perilous route.
Blocks of the finest marble hedged our |
pathway; trod upon chips of jasper and |
chalcedony, the product of different noun |
tains far up on the peninsula, and we passed |
two exquisitely beautiful boulders of veined !
porphyry, weighing 200 or 800 pounds each,
rounded and polished by centuries of attri-
ton. They were of d2skxouEple, streaked |
with quartz spOiiessly white, very desirable
specimens fsr cabinet, or for Out-Of-doOr
ornamentafion.
ON AN ICE MOUNTAIN.
4fter more than an hour of plunging and |
sprawfing, and of pulling each other out of |
gray mire, about half Of ournumber reached |
the uncovered glacier, and at the first glance |
we felt that here we should stand with un-
covered heads, for we were in the presence Of |
the marvellous manifestations of superhuman
power in action, and looked with unveiled |
much of this planet has been fashioned.
Away in the distance was the white lake /
fed by numerous frozen rivers, and these |
rivers were born of mountain SHOWS so |
miles distant The white-robed mountains |
themselves, Rons in the past, were smoothed |
and grooved far up their finty sides when |
this same glacier was threefold deeper and |
many times more ponderous and mightier
than it is to-day.
Ctrafohad alono fba bo IF fha |
till they are only lire in the distance were
the records of those gray old years in the |
form OF moraines, 100 feet high, and appear
ing like a range of hills.
The larger portion of this crystal river.
perhaps an eighth of a mile in width, is
heaved into rounded hills and beetling
precIpices, quite resembling the sea in
storm; while the middle and much the
wider part is splintered into countless spires |
and needles and pinnacles, TO- 20, 80 feet in
. height and of beautiful ultra-marine at
the base, shaded to a dead white at the
summit.
THE eIEcrER's MARCH.
In the onward march of the glacier these
pinnacles are occasionally wrenched from
their seats in the solid ice beneath-they
nod, then totter, into cloud of acicular
crystals that sparkle like the frosted snow
under full moon of winters night, only
with more Of color-they are diamonds on
the wing.
Again the whole surface is riven by a
thousand crevasses, along the bottom of
which streams of clear water find their
way, often broken BY waterfalls that plunge
further down into the dark blue abysses out
of sight. These chasms are frighttul gaps
to one peering down q hundred feet between
their turquoise walls. A slip, a frail AL
penstock, feeble grasp of the guides rope,
and gravity would close the scene without
further ceremony.
The molecular structure of the glacier is
continually changing, adjusting itself to the
elevations and depressions of its rocky bed,
and hence there is an incessant clinking and
cracking, interrupted here and there by an
explosion h. over every inch of the sur
4aces
The whole weird and strange in
sight and sound-in the voices that rise to
the air from the azure depths-fascinating
because every step is perilous, majestic from
its massiveness and awful because its march
is irresistible.
Consider what force in wearing away
mountains and glens an icy torrent must be,
one mile wide. 300 feet deep, and in the
middle flowing go feet day; Il goes grind
ing and groaning and cracking in startling
explosions, all mingled in a loud vail like
that from the Ttans imprisoned under Mount
-Etna.
Now let anyone in fancy frame for him.
self this picture: Suow-capped mountains
in the background, two Of them. Fair
weather and Crillon, more than Is, 900 feet
high, thick set with glittering beaks and
elear-cut as silhouettes on dark sky; the
great glacier, child of Arctic SHOWS, tur-
reted and pinnacled and splintered into
Thousand strange forms upon which Iris has