October-December 1879, First Alaska Trip with S. Hall Young Image 40

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1879
• Subjects: John Muir; journals; drawings; writings; travel; journaling; naturalist; Arctic; Indian; Main Bay; Ermine; glacier; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/1641; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/2640/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

back on a large stream, the outlet of a glacier, and an Indian who came out in a canoe with his wife to interview us told us that hose white men were building a large log house up there. It appears they had struck it and were afraid that we would find it out and tell others of the discovery. Hence all this Hibernian lying. When daylight fell on the landscape we had entered in the dark we found the mountains and the bay glacial and arctic beyond anything we had seen since leaving Icy Bay in Cross Sound. Large bergs lay stranded on the beach, and the water was studded with them as far as the eye could reach, while a noble gl[acier] came pouring down the mountain side through the trees directly behind our camp. It is from the tailings of this ice-mill that this mining company are getting their gold. Only in a few other spots along this coast has gold in paying quantities been found, principally at “shoughs” in the next bay to the S. What this last discovery may be I don’t know, more than that it was considered worth lying about to a very comprehensive extent. After breakfast we sailed up a branch of the bay trending a little to the E of South about ten miles, most of the way through a pack of bergs. This bay, or branch of the main bay is not down on the chart. It is about 10 ms. l[ong] and 3 wide, and is filled with bergs nearly from end to end and from shore to shore, so that siling in it is barely safe, and one is in danger of being frozen in should the present high tem[erature] fall below the freezing point. Our Captain was very unwilling to venture as far as he did, and I was compelled to turn without seeing the snout from which these bergs are derived. I only saw a portion of the gl[acier] itself. There are many smaller gl[acier]s on the mountain walls of the fiord. I counted 27, though I was not in position to see all of them. The largest of these secondary glaciers is the one near the {sketch: Train of buckskin hung with white ermine skins 5 ft long. Kow-ta-kan} ...