Alaska Land. A Canoe Voyage Among the Islands and Icebergs. Sum Dum Bay-Enormous Glaciers-Gold Mines-Products and Future Development of Alaska. (Special Correspondence of the Bulletin.) Sum Dum Bay, Alaska, August 22, 1880.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1880
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; annotation; Admiralty Island; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/151; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmb/article/1150/viewcontent/104_20v2.pdf

ALASKA-LAND -&. Canoe Voyage Among the Islands and Icebergs. Sum Bun Bay—Enormous . Glaciers—Gold Mines — Products and Future Development of Alaska. tsrGCIAL CORRESPONDENCE OP THE BULLETIN.] Sum Dum Bay, Alaska, August 22,1SS0. On the 18th, after, giving our Hoona friends B, little tobacco and rice far the purpose of feceping up " Klosh-tamtam" (kindly feelings), and taking a long last look at the salmon army iu its frantic excelsior march up the rapids, we glided northward along the coast beneath a Mack, dripping rain-clond that cut off all the mountains from sight above 200 feet from the water, and allowed only the base of Admiralty Island to be seen on our left, looking intensely 3blue in the distance across Prince Frederick's Sound. After rowing a few miles we passed a cluster of picturesque islands at the mouth of Shuck's inlet, or "Shough" as the Indians call it. Passing the two imposing headlands that stand guard at the entrance, we proceeded to explore it, though we knew by the purity of the water and the absence of bergs that it contained no great low-descending glaciers, however numerous the smaller ones might be lying in the upper (hollows along the mountain walls. We found it to be about nine miles long, and less than a mile in average width. The walls are irom 1,200 to 2,000 feet high, rising abruptly Out of deep water in beautiful curves clad with a dense growth of feathery spruces to the very top—the narrowest and the greenest of the glacial fiords we had yet seen. On the way up (the clouds melted into white sun-filled mist and drifted slowly about the walls in fleecy masses, some of these drawn out into thin, lustrous gauze, through which the trees were plainly seen, producing a most beautiful effect, while many a stream came leaping in glad, strong- ecstasy through the green woods, filling the air with musie from side to side and from one end of the fiord to the other. Four of these cascades, two on each side, make a grand show of snowy foam as they leap into the dark blue flevel of the ...