The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1899-11-24

Glacier, until all who have heard of
Alaska have heard of these wonders
of Nature. But seeing is believing,
and you will never know nor believe
how grand is the grandeur, or how
sublime is the sublimity. How can
you picture it to yourself? Fancy
waking some summer morning and
looking from the window of your
deck state-room to see wonderful
shapes and forms of floating ice.
You may feel that you are an ordl-
nary mortal on an ordinary boat, and
that your position is perilous, and
that the steamer with the great
masses of ice humping against it is in
great danger. If these sentiments can
get the upper hand Of you, do not be
an Alaskan traveller; you will not en-
Joy it. But you must not, cannot
feel thus. Instead, you will know
that you are immortal, that you have
left earth and have entered upon a
fairy scene. You are borne upon a
strange sea, a crystal sea made beau
tiful by crystal forms floating by, each
mass more beautiful than the other.
Some superhuman artist has sculp-
tured shapes in this substance
more beautiful than marble or
porphyry, which shines i'll the sun
with the fires Of the opal, or CLEANS
with the prismatic hues of the God
dess Iris. Glacial rivers are tributary
to this wonderful expanse OF water,
and in them, ere they were set af1oat,
were reared these sea-nymphs and
their crystal palaces. One OF these
glacial streams, mile wide and three
hundred feet high, as stately as Nj
agera, as awesome and as grand
sight as human eyes ever looked upon,
closes in the bay and says: mus
far and no farther.
Bursting upon this vision, one
realizes that he has been led through
this wonderful vestibule up to the
grandest spectacle that nature can
produce. 1t is here that the icebergs
are born with tremendous detona-
ton; tons upon tons of ice topple
from the glaciers ragged edge; the
echo is caught and carried on and on
down the bay the ice falling sends
up far above the icy wall spray
which forms thick veil of mist;
wave upon wave follows in gigantic
circles adown the shore, announcing
the advent of another berg. Gazing
into the depths of azure and deep
blue caves at whose portals are gigan-
tic shapes and gargoyles in crystal,
and treated every five or ten minutes
to the spectacle of an iceberg birth,
you will say, Had 1 seen nothing
else, although l had travelled half
round the earth, Alaska is worth
visiting !"
Besides the tranquil landscapes, the
archipelago, with its countless and
multiform islands, the gray crag-
bordered fjords, the Pacific expanses
and coniferous forests, the snow
capped fifteen thousand feet noun
tains, with glaciers broad enough
and long enough to cover a national
territory. Besides the icebergs, there
is another marvel in Alaska. 1t is
Color-color such as the artists can
never find ON his palette in which to
dabble his impotent brush. Nature
here is the all powerful colorist, and
she ravishes the beholder The
greens, the blues, the browns, of
Alaskan waters, who can describe
them, or the shades of coloring in
these same forests, grays and green's
in multitudinous varieties? A walk
through one of these forests vanished
with dew reveals tangle of greens
with bushes adorned with vivid coral
berries strung in rosaries or massed
in punches. No tropical forest could
exceed the coloring here shown. Every
gray that eye could see or the imagi-
nation conceive, is displayed in the
beetling crags and cliffs, and these
dnslxy colors change from moment to
moment, and when the sun casts its last
or it's earliest rays upon them, en-.
Veloping them in roseate hue, you
think miracle has been wrought, and
you are transfxed by the transfigura-
tion which has taken place. The sky
the Alaskan sky-is a revelation OF
color. Let it be sullen with foggy
grays, let it be clear with sapphire
clearness-so clear that a mountain
miles and miles away looks so neal
that it would seem that one would
only have to stretch out the hand to
touch it-let it be painted with the
sunset colors, gorgeous in the pomI
of purple and red and gold, fading,
fading in the long lingering summer
twilight, fading into the most en-.
trancing shades of primrose sulphur
and greenish yellow, and then almost
white, which deepens and deepens un.
til the jeweled stars look out and the
Aurora flashes her electric streamers
in pulsating bands of light, which,
reaching far up into the zenith, change
to delicate hues of pink and weird
unearthly blues-and one thinks each