The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1889-06-22
THE MUIR GLACIER.
One Of Parkway Alaska's Most
Majestic Wonders.
An Icy Torrent One Mile Wide and Eight
Hundred Feet Deep, Moving Sixty
Feet Fer Day-A Weird,
wild Sight.

Wild Sight.
The most notable of the glaciers In
Southeastern Alaska is the Muir,
named from Prof. John Muir, geolo-
gist 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. Be-
ing reinforced by fifteen tributaries
coming down the glens from different
points of the compass, 1t swells to an
icy sea twenty-five miles in diameter.
Thence it moves with resistless power,
bearing rocks and long lines of de-
tritus on its billowy surface. just be-
fore it reaches the bay it is compressed
by two sentinel mountains into and is
forced through a gorge one mile in
width.
Emerging from this narrow gateway
1t moves on, at the rate of forty to
sixty feet a day, to the waters whence
it originally came, buttressing the bay
with a perpendicular wall 800 feet
high, 800 feet of ultramarine crystals
tipped with purest white being
above the surface, and, being
pushed beyond its support in
the underlying rock, battle
begins between cohesion and gravity.
The latter force always prevails, and
vast masses break from the glacial tor
rent with the combined crash of fall
ing walls and heavy thunder, tumble
into the bay with a dash and a 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 receive in
their fall, and the leaping waters are
lively witnesses to the birth of an ice
berg which henceforth, as an inde-
pendent existence, goes on its mission
of girding 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 appear
ance Of a mass Of dark crystal, vastly
larger than our ship. shooting up from
the depths and tossing our steamer as
if it were an eggshell. 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 unexpect-
eddy appeared upon the scene. Had it
struck the ship fairly nothing but a
miracle could have saved us.
Having recovered somewhat from
our 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 of a
lateral moraine, crawled, shoe-deep in
wet gravel, down into the valley of a
glacial river, forded it, padded
through glacial mud covered with
single just deep enough to hide the
creamy pools, slipped PROSTATE on the
ice made treacherous by thin dis
guise 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 pro-
fusion, along our perilous route.
Blocks of the finest marble hedged
our pathway; trod upon chips of jasper
and chalcedony, the product of differ
mountains fop nm oy, ba ,,oo;,,,,1o
and we passed two exquisitely- beauti-
full powders of veined porphyry,
weighing two or three hundred pounds
each, rounded and polished by cent
uries of attrition. They were Of dark
purple, streaked with quartz spotless-
ly white, desirable specimens for a
cabinet, or for out-of-door ornamental
ton.
After more than an hour of plunging
and 'sprawling, and of pulling each
other out of gray mire, about half of
our number reached the uncovered
glacier, and at the first glance we felt
that here we should stand with uncov-
cred heads, for we were in the presence
of the marvellous manifestations of
superhuman power in action and
looked with unvailed 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 fifty miles distant. The white
robed mountains themselves, aons in
the past, were smoothed and grooved
far up their flinty sides when this same
glacier was threeiold deeper and many
times more ponderous and mighty
than it is to-day.
Stretched along the base of the
mountains till they are only line in
the distance were the records OF those