October-December 1879, First Alaska Trip with S. Hall Young Image 23
The sky after sunrise was light blue. The sun shone through colored bars, red and cerise and fell in spiritual purity upon innumerable peaks, every one clad in spotless white from top to base, every one girdled with fresh snow. First the light from where I sat fell upon one peak in richest rosy crim...
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| Language: | English |
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Scholarly Commons
1879
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| Online Access: | https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/1624 https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/2623/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg |
| Summary: | The sky after sunrise was light blue. The sun shone through colored bars, red and cerise and fell in spiritual purity upon innumerable peaks, every one clad in spotless white from top to base, every one girdled with fresh snow. First the light from where I sat fell upon one peak in richest rosy crimson of the most exciting beauty, so warm, a bathing penetrating bloom, not an external flush but apparently the whole mass, so cool in its snow, was burning like hot metal, yet ineffably pure and immaterial. Then one after another was transfigured in the same God light, which changed in 20 or 30 minutes to a neutral tint which would perhaps be called lavender, a color I never before saw on land or sea. Then came commoner shades of red and purple. Then yellow paler and paler. The sky in the W was violet , with a purple cloud here and there of small size. This was the most marvelously lovely gl[acier] morning I ever saw. So glorious a multitude of Alps laden with ice bathed in a light as eternal and impressive as that of the alpenglow, yet perfectly novel and more massy and thick. The bay full or bergs setting out in the wind, spangles on the green water, prismatic light flashing and glowing on the gl[acier]s and bergs and shattered crystal of the ice battlements and a furred white glow on the snow domes and swelling currents of the gl[acier]s. We sailed out of Icy bay and rounded the point which terminates it on its left side. {sketch} Oct. 29. – Intended to run up to the snout of a fine glacier which pours its ice into another branch of the main bay, but found it closed with thin ice as well as by a jamb of bergs which had been floated there during the night by the changing wind. We could only observe W therefore at a dist[ance] of 3 or 4 ms. The next gl[acier] to the right as you look up N.ward was blocked in the same way. The next which comes in on the E side of the main bay we visited, landing and going back upon it a short dist[ance]. This one does not reach the bay, but melts about a mile from the short. Its ... |
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