Five Nights | Page 2

the vessel gliding on through this dream of
lustrous blue. Slowly we advanced towards the Muir; very slowly, for
these shining bergs carried death with them if they should graze hard
against the steamer's side, and, cautiously, steered with infinite pains,
the little boat crept on, zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of
man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom
forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent

splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of
the most gigantic forces of Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire
sea supported it, the transparent light illumined it, the lance-like
mountains looked down upon it, and the glistening bergs forbore to
crush it, as if disdaining to harm so fragile a thing.
Very slowly we pushed up the inlet, approaching the shimmering
blue-green wall of ice that barred the upper end; seven hundred feet
down below the clear surface of the water descends this wall, while
three hundred feet of it rise above, forming a glorious shining palisade
across the entire width of the inlet. As the sun played on the glittering
façade, rays struck out from it as from a reflector, of every shade of
green and blue, the deepest hue of emerald mingling with the lightest
sapphire, iridescent, sparkling, wonderful. As we crept still nearer, over
the living blue of the water, the continual fall of the icebergs from the
front wall of the glacier became apparent. At intervals of about five
minutes, with a terrific crash like thunder a great wedge of the glittering
wall would fall forward into the blue-green depths, and a cloud of
snowy spray rise up hundreds of feet into the air. The berg, thus
detached, after a few minutes would rise to the surface, glistening,
dazzling, and begin its joyous, buoyant voyage downwards to the sea.
In all this brilliant setting, with this glory of light around and the
triumphal crash of sound like the salute of cannon, amid this joyous
movement and in this blaze of colour, amid all that seemed to personify
life, we were watching the death of the glacier.
The colossal Muir Glacier, the remains of a world the history of which
is lost in the dim twilight none can now penetrate, is dying slowly
through a million years. From the mountains, eternally snow-covered,
where its huge body, three hundred and fifty miles in extent, has rested
through the centuries, it creeps forward slowly towards the sea to meet
its doom. Formerly its lip touched the open ocean where now the Taku
inlet commences to run inland. But the icy waters, that yet are so much
warmer than itself, caressed it with eroding caresses and melted it, and
broke bergs from it and rushed inwards, following it till they formed
the Taku Inlet, and now the process still goes on, the gigantic body
moves forward inch by inch and the green waves break the bergs from

its face as the sun invades its structure; and so it lies there, dying
slowly through the countless years, glorious, miraculous.
The Captain had promised to approach the face of the glacier as near as
was reasonably safe and lie there at anchor for an hour, that the
passengers might land at the side of the inlet and those who wished
could explore the glacier.
An hour! What was an hour? Those sixty golden minutes would be
gone in a flash. Yet it would be an hour of life, of deep emotion, face to
face with this monster, strange relic of a forgotten world, stretched on
its glorious death-bed.
I was alone still. Not another passenger had yet come up, and I could
lean there undisturbed, trying to open my eyes still wider, to expand my
heart, to stretch my brain, that I might drink in more of the inimitable
grandeur and beauty round me.
The nearer we drew to the glacier the closer packed became the water
with the floating bergs; they threatened the ship now on every side, and
so slowly did we move we hardly seemed advancing. The bergs flashed
and shone as they passed us, rayed through with jewel-like colours, and
on one gliding by far from the ship's side I saw two seals at play. For
many hundred miles past these seals were the only living things I had
seen. The forests on the shore, so thick in the first part of the journey
by the Alaskan coast, had long since given way to barren rocks,
snow-capped peaks, and ice-filled clefts. No life seemed possible there,
the wide distant blue above had shown no bird nor shadow of bird
passing. There was no voice of insect nor the least of Nature's children
here. Between the thunderous crash of