The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1889-07-03
THE MOTHER OF ICEBERGS.
A GLACIER FORTY MILES LoNS;
MOVES SIXTY FEET A DAY.


The most notable Of the glaciers in
Southeastern Alaska, says Professor Hor-
ace W Briggs, in the Sitka ALASKAN, is the
Muir, named from Professor John Muir,
geologist of some reputation, since he
gave the first uncolored description of it.
1t is forty miles long, and back on the
land, in basin of the mountains. Being
reinforced by fifteen tributaries coming
down the glens from differents points
of the compass, it swells to an icy sea
twenty-five miles in diameter. Thence it
moves with resistless power, bearing rocks
and long lines of detritus on its billowy
surface. Just before it reaches the bay it
is compressed by two sentinel mountains
into and is forced through gorge one
mile in width.
Emerging from this narrow gateway it
moves on, at the rate of forty to sixty
feet day, to the waters whence it origin
ally came, buttressing the bay with a
perpendicular wall 800 feet high, 300
feet of ultramarine crystals tipped with
purest white being above the surface,
and, being pushed beyond its support in
the underlying rock, battle begins be-
tween 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
timber, a tumble into the bay with
dash and shock that agitates the waters
miles away, making navigation perilous
to craft of all sizes. The almost deafen-
ing roar made when these masses are rent
away, the splashing baptism they receive
in their fall and the leaping waters are
lively witnesses to the birth of an ice
berg, which henceforth, as an independ-
ent existence, goes on its mission of grid
ing the shores, butting against its fellows
and of soaring navigators.
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 eggsbell. AS the vessel careened,
the frightened passengers were sent whirl-
ing 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 be-
low the surface, and hence had unex-
pectedly appear upon the scene. Had it
struck the ship fairly nothing but mira
Gle could have saved us.
Having recovered somewhat from om
dumb amazement, about twenty of us
were sent on shore in the captains gig
Landing some distance below the ice wall,
we climbed seventy feet up a lateral
moraine, crawled, shoe-deep in wet
gravel, down into the valley of glacial
river, forded it, padded through glacial
mud covered with shingle just deep
enough to hide the creamy pools, slipped
PROSTATE on the ice made treacherous by
thin disguise of detritus, and barked
our shins and cut our shoes on the sharp
angular blocks of granite and basalt
strewn for two miles, in great profusion,
along our perilous route.
After more than an hour of plunging
and sprawling, and of pulling each other
out of gray mire, about half of our num-
Der reached the uncovered glacier, and at
the first glance we felt that here we should
stand with uncovered heads, for we were
in the presence of the marvellous mani
festations of superhuman power in action,
and looked with unveiled eyes upon the
potent agencies by which 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
iIty miles distant. The white-robed
mountains themselves, icons in tue past,
were smoothed and grooved far up their
fiinty sides when this same glacier was
threefold deeper and many times more
ponderous and mighty than it is to-day.
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 o
storm; while the middle and much the
wider part is splintered into countless
spires and needles and pinnacles, ten,
twenty, thirty feet in height, and of q
beautiful ultra-marine at the base shaded
to dead white at the summit.
In the onward march of the glacier
these pinnacles are occasionally wrenched
from their seats in the solid ice beneath
they nod, then totter, and then make a
plunge, and are shattered into cloud of
acicular crystals that sparkle like the
frosted snow under full moon Of a
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
frightful gaps to one peering down hun
dred feet between their turquoise walls.
A slip, frail alpenstock, a feeble grasp
of the guides rope, and gravity would
close the scene without further cere,
mOny.
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 inces.
SAINT clicking and cracking, interrupted
here and there by an explosion heard
over every inch of the surface.
The whole scene is 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