October-December 1879, First Alaska Trip with S. Hall Young Image 51

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1879
• Subjects: John Muir; journals; drawings; writings; travel; journaling; naturalist; Big Bluff; Noble Glacier; glacier; Tidewater; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/1652; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/2651/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

At length we found a little inlet, the mouth of a stream which drains a large gl[acier] into which we gladly pushed our canoe, everybody benumbed. A white cross, pure white, stood as a mark and a sign of welcome on the black wave-beaten shore rocks. It was a weathered chiseled ice-berg. How pure it seemed and hopeful. A rosiny fire was speedily made and our weary benumbed limbs were warmed into common comfort again. Here were remained until next morning. Nov. 20, about daybreak, when we pushed out and rounded the big bluff Cape off the mouth of Wrangel narrows. From here nearly to the N mouth of the Stickine the shore is composed of a series of very steep, headlands streaked with waterfalls and thinly feathered with spruces, deep fiords between. At the head of one of these 10 ms. from the Cape and the second from the Stickine mouth there is a noble glacier pouring down a steep incline into a deep tidewater and sending off a multitude of bergs which fill the fiord from end to end, and float off into the Souchoi Channel and towards Prince Fred[Erick] Sound, a dist[ance] of about 40 ms. This is, as far as I know, the southmost of the gl[acier]s flowing into the sea. Toyatte was greatly exercised about the safety of his darling canoe, and begged that we would not venture to force a way through the bergs, but we held him to his work and reached a point on the right side of the fiord about {sketch: Sitideka looking Seward from N-most gl[acier].} https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2651/thumbnail.jpg