The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1912-07-14

4
check by jowl with fine old sill.
yer samovar, dating from the Russian
occupation, and with ancient Indian
| baskets, fine of weave and lovely in
decoration, and with a bit Of remark
able Indian pottery, were all the de-
vices of an up.to'date civilization
telephone, Steinway piano and electric
appliances of all kinds, including a
vacuum cleaner.
Seward lay at the end of certain
horns in the open where the whole Pa
cifc ocean pounded into that long arm
Alaska filings around its northeast cor
ner. 1t required something really
great to make us forget those certain
hours. but Resurrection bay was
quite equal to the blotting out even
Of sea-sick memory.
In the carly morning we slipped
through the gateway-giant island
cliffs, lowered and turTeted at their
SUBMITS, fretted into colonnades and
caves by the breakers at their feet.
Then other mountain forms, mysteri-
Gus, ghostly, half shrouded in mist, re-
vealed the gaunt awful heights. And
our poor little "Mariposa' barely felt
her way among these mighty forms,
where Thor, the thunder god himself,
might have his dwelling place.
Wait a minute, for the climax is not
yet. I thought nothing in nature
could be more impressive than Resur-
rection bay, but she has something else
in store for us.
We went back from Seward to Cor
dova and while three car loads Of cop
per ore from the Bonanza mine, some
900 miles in the interior, were being
loaded into the hold, we had ride in
a private car. We ran close TO the
Copper river, up which the Argonauts
used to paddle, making portage
across and finally reaching the Yukon.
The railroad, costing a mere bagatelle
of $2o,ooo,ooo for its 200 miles, is
built mostly across the tundra which l
was told Is sort Of soil Of decaying
vegetation with the Ice a few feet be-
meath the surface. The engineers had
to floor their roadbed with corduroy
Of logs before they could put in the
rock and gravel and lay their ties and
rails.
Imagine being superintendent Of a
road 30 built with the snow ten feet on
the level most Of the year and gentle
little icebergs jostling against your
bridge piers in between timesl The
superintendent went with us and
seemed a cheerful sort of chap, do
ing his days work without whimper.
We were being taken to the source of
these same icebergs to the Child's gla-
eier. There had been other glaciers
along the way, one stretching for sixty
miles along the coast, and we had
shivered through Icy Straits, where
great icebergs, blue and sinister, drift
cd all too near, but now we were to
see the real thing. We stood on the
bank Of the Copper river, q quarter
Of mile wide at this time, and looked
across at a great ice cliff towering 300
feet into the sky; now white and
smooth like marble, now creamy in
color and veined, carved into crags and
peaks along the upper edge, broken
into great stalagmites below and over
all tho cold blue cleaning.
Every little while sound Ike a
pistol shot broke the stiffness as the
avalanche cracked away from the cliff
and then a rending noise and the
crash of artillery as the huge mass
plunged into the stream, while the
boom, boom rolled away into the hills
like the crack o. doom. We had ar
rived at last in natures workshop;
here she was with her Irresistible
forces of snow and ice, sunshine, riv-
ers, mountains, making the world.
After that cima1-an antl-climaxf
No, lust a drifting back into civlIza-
tion and Seattle through world mostly
gray-the sea, the sky, the cliffs, even
the gulls gray of wing and snowy of
breast. There were lavender heights
and purple depths, a red moon like
q great lantern swung above noun
tain shoulder and reelected in the wa
ter, still lakes, lovely rivers until sat |
urated with scenery, brown and