Hot Springs weekly star. (Hot Springs, S.D.) 1892-1917, 1892-07-29
I'll MUIR GLACIER.
a Moving slas. Of Ice 4. zoo Mile. I'm p,.
mensious,

N
A Moving siass Of Ice 1000 Miles I'm nj.
menstons.
The famous glaciers of the Alps
which for many years have attracted
tourists from all over the world are
insignificant compared with some OF
those in America, Briefly, a glacier
Is a river of ice, the frozen mass con-
stantly moving toward the sea or the
valley and carrying with it large
masses Of rock and debris from the
mountain sides. Perhaps the best
known and most remarkable in this
country is the Muir glacier in Alaska,
named after John Muir, a Californian,
who first acquainted the world with
its wonders and beauty. The follow
ing description of 1T by a writer in the
Californian Magazine is full of inter.
est:
1.-THE Muir glacier, a stupendous
piece Of natures handiwork, is i'm
pressive, grand beyond all expression.
Viewed from Glacier bay, it is a mass
i've wall of virgin ice, scintillating in
the light, with the hucs Of the rain
bow, now an intense blue, green, yell
low and gold, now flashing as white
as snow can make it; Il frontage of
divine conception, a wall of ice three
miles wide, a thousand feet or more
in hight from the bottom, from 200
to at times nearly 500 feet in places,
above water, moving on with resist
less force into the bay at a rate Of
forty to sixty feet a day, a river of
ice, frozen dead in the graspof winter,
an offering of the mountain gods to
Neptune, a stony stream whose vol
ume cannot he appreciated by human
mind, an evidence IF the Maker, be-
fore which man stands, insignificant
and astounded.
1.-THE length Of Muir glacier is esti-
mated at forty miles, its greatest
width at twenty five, but as it APP
proaches the sea it enters a rocky
ravine formed by two ranges of.moun-
tainS, and the entire mass is COM
pressed into a narrow gulch about a
mile across, through which it grinds
and pushes on as it has for untold
centuries.
'There were caves and grottoes in
the face of the glacier alive with an
intense silvery light, reflected from
every possible angle, that positively
daZZled ones eyes. AS we looked,
the ice was broken into semblance of
masses of building OF all sorts, from
Indian tepsle to Grecian temple-hcre
a Norman and Gothic cathedral of
Titanic size, there's production of the
Parthenon or the Tower Of Pisa in
amethyst granite of an almost trans
parent c%learness.
'sAfter a most tedious climb,
stumbling over ice, snow. mud and
soft gravel, passing debris from the
distant mountains. we reached the
summit and stood upon one of the
mightiest ice fields i'm America. and
for that matter. in eXistencc-stood
upon a platform comprising 1900
square miles of blue ice, tipped with
cleaning snow.
s'From the top, looking down upon
the bay, with its floating bcrgs. and
the steamer, n obtains an idea of
the actual vastness of the mass of ice
upon which he is standing. where it
is, say 400 feetabove water, while be-
low The surface, securing into the
mud and bottom, blowing its way
into the Pacific. is six or seven humid
red feet more of ice, invisible to the
eye. 1t is this bath, which the gla-
cier takes, that forms the iceberg.
AS the enormous mass enters the
ocean, it is in some cases. lifted up
and broken of from below. Again
enormous masses topple w and fall
into the water, in either case giving
birth to an iceberg, which sails away
to become dissolved in the waters of
the Pacific. The severing from the
parent mass is accompanied by loud
detonations. sounds unlike anything
else, weird and strange to the ear,
startling in their distinctness. Now
the entire front of a pinnacle top
pies and falls with a mighty crash,
causing waves which come rolling
along, tipping the big steamer as if
she we're small boat"