With the World's Great Travellers Volume I Part 15

Meanwhile, one of the relief party, who in his agitation and excitement was crying like a child, was down on his hands and knees trying to roll away the stones that held down the flapping tent cloth. The tent was a "tepik," or wigwam tent, with a fly attached. The fly, with its posts and ridge-pole, had been wrecked by the gale which had been blowing for thirty-six hours, and the pole of the tepik was toppling over, and only kept in place by the guy-ropes. There was no entrance except under the flap opening, which was held down by stones. Colwell called for a knife, cut a slit in the tent-cover, and looked in.

It was a sight of horror. On one side, close to the opening, with his head towards the outside, lay what was apparently a dead man. His jaw had dropped, his eyes were open, but fixed and gla.s.sy, his limbs were motionless. On the opposite was a poor fellow, alive to be sure, but without hands or feet, and with a spoon tied to the stump of his right arm. Two others seated on the ground, in the middle, had just got down a rubber bottle that hung on the tent-pole, and were pouring from it into a tin can. Directly opposite, on his hands and knees, was a dark man with a long matted beard, in a dirty and tattered dressing-gown, with a little red skull-cap on his head, and brilliant staring eyes. As Colwell appeared, he raised himself a little, and put on a pair of eye-gla.s.ses.

"Who are you?" asked Colwell.

The man made no answer, staring at him vacantly.

"Who are you?" again.

One of the men spoke up: "That's the major,--Major Greely."

Colwell crawled in and took him by the hand, saying to him, "Greely, is this you?"

"Yes," said Greely in a faint broken voice, hesitating and shuffling with his words, "yes--seven of us left--here we are--dying--like men.

Did what I came to do--beat the best record."

Then he fell back exhausted.

The four men in the tent with Greely were two sergeants, Elison and Fredericks; Bierderbick, the hospital steward; and Private Connell, who, with Brainard and Long, were all that remained of the twenty-five members of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition. The scene, as Colwell looked around, was one of misery and squalor. The rocky floor was covered with cast-off clothes, and among them were huddled together the sleeping-bags in which the party had spent most of their time during the last few months. There was no food left in the tent but two or three cans of a thin, repulsive-looking jelly, made by boiling strips cut from the seal-skin clothing. The bottle on the tent-pole still held a few teaspoonfuls of brandy, but it was their last, and they were sharing it as Colwell entered; it was evident that most of them had not long to live....

As soon as Colwell understood the condition of affairs, he sent Chief-Engineer Lowe back to the cutter to put off to the "Bear" with Long, to report what had happened, and bring off the others with the surgeon and stimulants. Fredericks and Bierderbick presently got up and came out. Colwell gave them, as well as Greely and Elison, a little of the biscuit he had in his pocket, which they munched slowly and deliberately. Then he gave them another bit, while Norman opened one of the cans of pemmican. Sc.r.a.ping off a little with a knife, Colwell fed them slowly by turns. It was a pitiable sight. They could not stand up, and had dropped down on their knees, and held out their hands begging for more. After they had each been fed twice, they were told that they had had enough, that they could not eat more then without danger; but their hunger had now come back with full force, and they begged piteously to be helped again, protesting that it could do them no harm.

Colwell was wisely deaf to their entreaties and threw away the can.

When Greely found that he was refused he took out a can of the boiled seal-skin, which had been carefully husbanded, and which he said he had a right to eat, as it was his own. This was taken away from him, but while Colwell was at work trying to raise the tent, some one got the half-emptied can of pemmican, and by the time it was discovered had eaten its contents.

The weaker ones were like children, petulant, rambling and fitful in their talk, absent, and sometimes a little incoherent. While they were waiting for the return of the boat, Colwell and the ice-masters did their best to cheer them up by telling them that relief was at hand, and that the others would soon arrive. They could not realize it, and refused to believe it. So they were humored, and by way of taking up their thoughts, Colwell told them something of what had been going on in the world during their three years of exile. Curiously enough, there was much that they knew already. It turned out that among the stores from the "Proteus" were two boxes of lemons, and the fruit had been wrapped up in sc.r.a.ps of English newspapers,--"those lemons which your dear wife put up for us," as one of them said to Colwell in a moment of wandering fancy. The latter could only disclaim the imaginary obligation to an imaginary person, but the impression had already faded.

As Greely complained of cold, Colwell gave him his gloves, and persuaded him to go back to his sleeping-bag. This was lying under the fallen tent-cloth, which the party had been too weak or too discouraged to raise up and disengage. Where the single remaining pole supported the tent there was a clear s.p.a.ce of perhaps six feet, just enough for a man to stand upright, but around it the canvas was lying on the ground. The bag, from which Greely had hardly moved for a month, was found under the canvas, and by the united efforts of the three men the tent was partly raised.

Meanwhile, the "Bear" had arrived and Lowe had gone off in the cutter, taking with him Sergeant Long. Long was too weak to get on board without a.s.sistance, and was lifted over the side by some of the crew and taken to a chair in the wardroom. In reply to questions about the party and their condition, Long, in a husky voice, told his story: that all were dead except Greely and five others, who were on sh.o.r.e in "sore distress--sore distress;" that they had had a hard winter, and "the wonder was how in G.o.d's name they had pulled through." No words can describe the pathos of this man's broken and enfeebled utterance as he said, over and over, "a hard winter--a hard winter;" and the officers who were gathered about him in the wardroom felt an emotion which most of them were at little pains to conceal. The first sign of the relief expedition which had reached the camp was the sound from the steam whistle of the "Thetis," recalling the sh.o.r.e parties at Payer Harbor.

Lieutenant Greely, lying on the ground in his tent, had heard it, as it was borne faintly over the neck of land, but the others had not noticed it in the roaring wind, and when he told them he had heard a steamer's whistle, they thought it only the impression of his disturbed imagination. Long crawled out of the tent and, bracing himself against the wind, struggled up to the ridge; but nothing could be seen but the rocky coast, and the ice-foot, and the chopping sea with the pack stretching off in the distance. It was a bitter disappointment. Long went back disheartened, but after waiting uneasily awhile longer, he mounted the ridge a second time. Still there was nothing to be seen but the same hopeless prospect, and he was about to return again when the cutter came into view around the point above. After all these months of waiting it was hard to believe that he was not dreaming, but when he saw the c.o.xswain wave the familiar flag, he knew that relief had come at last.

[The conclusion of the story is longer than we have s.p.a.ce to give. It will suffice to say that the survivors were gradually brought back to life and health, and that the living and the bodies of the dead alike were brought back to the United States; and that in the robust-appearing General Greely of to-day there is nothing to indicate the terrible strain of that dread winter in the realm of ice.]

THE MUIR GLACIER.

SEPTIMA M. COLLIS.

[No other country in the world possesses so many unique wonders of nature as the United States. The Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone Park, Mammoth Cave, Niagara Falls, and Sequoia Groves each stands alone in its peculiar beauty or grandeur; and to these we may add the Muir Glacier in Alaska, before which the famous glaciers of the Alps shrink into insignificance, and which has no rival outside the Arctic zone.

"A Woman's Trip to Alaska," by Mrs. Collis, gives a vivid and picturesque description of this glacial wonder, which we here append. The sketch given is preceded by a statistical one, in which we are told that this glacier sheds from its front "one hundred and sixty million cubic feet of ice every twenty-four hours."]

The previous chapter has briefly outlined the main facts within my knowledge concerning the Muir Glacier which I had gathered from my reading, and upon which I had to create the image of what I expected to see. True, I had seen photographs of it; yes, and I had seen photographs of the Canon of the Yellowstone, and of the Nevada Falls, and of Niagara, just as I have seen paste diamonds; I knew their shapes, and that is all I ever gathered from their portraits. Neither the expression, nor the complexion, nor the sound of the voice of nature are to be found upon the dull surface of the photograph; you simply get the general lines, some of the shadows, very erroneous perspective, and that is all. We had come to a stand-still while we were at lunch. I had observed the slackening of speed; next the stoppage of the machinery; then the absolute stillness of the s.h.i.+p; and finally a darkening of the saloon. We were evidently at a halt under the shadow of some immense elevation. A pa.s.senger on tiptoe looked through the port-hole, and uttered an exclamation of amazement; then we all rushed to similar apertures; climbed on the chairs; looked over the men's shoulders; in fact, did all kinds of unreasonable things, and at last stampeded up the companion-way to the deck.

I pray heaven that neither age nor infirmity may ever efface from my memory the sight and the sensation of that moment. To say that I was transfixed, speechless, fascinated to intoxication by the spell of this marvellous development is no exaggeration. Those who reached the deck first seemed paralyzed, halted, and thus blockaded the way for those who were to follow; others kept within the saloon from choice, as though they dreaded some phenomenal convulsion. I wedged my way as best I could, after the first shock of amazement had subsided, up to the very bow of the s.h.i.+p.

Upon each side of me, half a mile away, rose the same old mountains which I had seen everywhere from Tacoma north; at my feet the same Pacific Ocean, but in front of me, apparently so close that I could almost reach it with my fingers, the perpendicular wall of a canon, not of rock, nor clay, nor gra.s.s, nor forest, but of ice,--a wall of ice a mile in length; and when I say a mile, I mean over eighteen hundred yards of it; and when I speak of ice, I do not mean the sooty, porous stuff that lodges in the valleys of the Alps; I mean the veritable, pure, clear, crystal ice of the ice-pitcher. A wall a hundred yards high, and in some places towering up an additional fifty; a wall extending down deeper in the ocean than it reaches from the ocean to the sky; hard as adamant, sharp and edged like flint, aqua-marine in color, deepening towards the water into indigo, tipped on the summits and projections with a froth of snow. If I did not know that it was ice, I should believe that it was gla.s.s. If I did not know that it was the work of the Creator, I should believe that here had a.s.sembled a convocation of architects, who in their collective ingenuity had reproduced a combination of the chefs-d'oeuvre of their art; for here were the b.u.t.tresses of the English abbeys, and flying b.u.t.tresses of Notre Dame, turrets of the Normans, towers of the early English, spires of the cathedral in Cologne, wonderful unoccupied niches, pilasters of the purest white marble and green malachite, and decorative carving and high polish worthy of Cellini.

It was a cloudy day, yet the front glistened with prismatic splendor.

What will it be, I asked myself, if in the afternoon the setting sun shall light it up? But we are too close to it for our own safety, we learn, and are slowly moved back half a mile, where our anchor is dropped and preparations are made to row us on sh.o.r.e to climb to the top of the glacier. While we are moving a sharp detonation rings out like the firing of a rifle, and one of the beautiful spires on the crest of the very centre of the wall is s.h.i.+vered into atoms, and its fragments fall with a splash four hundred feet. Later there is a report as of a cannon, but without result; this, we are told, is the parting of the sea of ice somewhere far back in its mountain home. Presently two similar explosions, evidently right close to us, followed by rumbling echoes, and over topples a huge ma.s.s weighing tons, which sinks so far that several seconds elapse before it rises to the surface, swaying to and fro until it finds its equilibrium, and then floats down the current, one more turquoise gem added to the chain which precedes it.

And this continued all day, sometimes at intervals of seconds only, sometimes of half an hour, and when we retired at night the explosion and the splash became as monotonous and periodical as the tinkling of the street-car bell or the footstep of the pa.s.ser-by does at home. There was one tremendous breaking-off towards evening; the sun, as we had hoped, was out in full glory, and at the distance from which we now viewed the glacier it was a mountain of snow-covered ice chopped off in front. For many miles we could see over and beyond the facade, as though looking at a great river of snow; yet the facade itself was a face of corrugated emerald, reflecting the sun's rays at every imaginable angle, and changing and scintillating with every movement of the s.h.i.+p.

Suddenly, near the centre, the top began to incline forward, and the whole face of probably twenty yards in width, from the top of the glacier to the bottom of the bay, fell outward as a ladder would fall, without a break anywhere. There was a tremendous upheaving of the water, of course; then the report of the invariable explosion reached us, but no trace remained of the fallen ice, save the swell in the water, which had almost reached and rocked the steamer. I do not know how much time elapsed before the lovely thing rose to the surface, but it seemed an age, and then it came in a dozen pieces, each of the same exquisite diaphanous blue, which, as they approached us gradually, changed to a clear transparent sapphire.

If it will help to serve the purpose of giving a just idea of the colossal proportions of the scene I endeavor to describe, let me say that the Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton, the City Hall in Philadelphia, the Cathedral, the Equitable, and the Mills Buildings in New York, and all the mammoth newspaper offices in the same city might be floated in front of the Muir Glacier, and yet its emerald walls would overtop and engulf them all. As a contrast to all that is pure and chaste in the scene before us, there rushes out from the eastern end of the glacier a subglacial stream of thick, dirty water, much resembling, as it boils up from its cavernous outlet, the mud geyser of the Yellowstone. This is a perpetually flowing river, charged with sediment and _debris_ from the scouring process produced by the friction of the moving ice along its bed of rock; it gives the water in the inlet a thick, gray color, utterly destroying the charm of its otherwise transparent character.

If you are amiable enough to say that what I have written gives a sufficiently correct idea of what you expect to see, I beg to differ from you. No camera, no pencil, no vocabulary, can do more than produce a desire to see for one's self. I can only say that it has been my fortune to behold much that is grand in nature and in art at home and abroad, but the hours spent at Muir Glacier made the great event of my life. If G.o.d spares me, I hope to see it often. And fearing I might be accused of exaggeration, which is far from my desire, for I am searching in vain for superlatives which would do the subject justice, let me quote from others who preceded me, and all of whom have established their reputation as authorities.

Miss Kate Field says, "In Switzerland a glacier is a vast bed of dirty, air-holed ice that has fastened itself, like a cold porous plaster, to the side of an Alp. Distance alone lends enchantment to the view. In Alaska a glacier is a wonderful torrent that seems to have been suddenly frozen when about to plunge into the sea.... Think of Niagara Falls frozen stiff, add thirty-six feet to its height, and you have a slight idea of the terminus of Muir Glacier, in front of which your steamer anchors; picture a background of mountains fifteen thousand feet high, all snow-clad, and then imagine a gorgeous sun lighting up the ice-crystals with rainbow coloring. The face of the glacier takes on the hue of aquamarine, the hue of every bit of floating ice, big and little, that surround the steamer and make navigation serious. These dazzling serpents move at the rate of sixty-four feet a day, tumbling headlong into the sea, and, as they fall, the ear is startled by submarine thunder, the echoes of which resound far and near. Down, down, down goes the berg, and woe to the boat in its way when it rises again to the surface."

Charles Hallock in "Our New Alaska," pp. 172-733: "The glacier wall overhung us with its mighty majesty, three times the height of the steamer's mast or more, and we seemed none too far away to escape the constantly cleaving ma.s.ses which dropped from its face with deafening detonations. The foam which gathered from the impetus of the plunges surged upward fully two-thirds of the height of the cliff, and the resulting swell tossed the large steamer like a toy, and rolled up in breakers of surf upon the beach.... The glacier is by no means smooth, but is seamed and riven in every part by clefts and fissures. It is hollowed into caverns and grottos, hung with ma.s.sive stalact.i.tes, and fas.h.i.+oned into pinnacles and domes. Every section and configuration has its heart of translucent blue or green, interlaced or bordered by fretted frostwork of intensest white, so that the appearance is at all times gnome-like and supernatural....

"I cannot conceive how any one can sit by and contemplate without emotion the stupendous throes which give birth to the icebergs, attended with detonations like explosions of artillery, and reverberations of thunder across the sky, and the mighty wreckage which follows each convulsion. Nevertheless, I have seen a lady loll with complaisance in her steamer chair comfortably wrapped for the chilly air, and observe the astounding scene with the same languid contemplation that she would discuss her social fixtures and appointments. Zounds! I believe that such a human negation would calmly view the wrecks of worlds and hear the crack of doom at the final rendering, if it did not affect her set. She could watch, at a suitable distance, the agony of Christian martyrs, the carnage of great battles, the sweep of cyclones, the diluvial submergence. Dynamite would not appall her, but to me it would be the acme of satisfaction, ineffably supreme, to startle such clods of inanition by a cry of mouse, and electrify them into momentary emotion. No vinaigrette would ever mitigate the shock."...

Mrs. E. R. Scidmore, in "Journeys in Alaska," says, "Avalanches of crumbling snow and great pieces of the front were continually falling with the roar and crash of artillery, revealing new caverns and rifts of deeper blue light, while the spray dashed high and the great waves rolled along the icy wall, and, widening in their sweep, washed the blocks of floating ice up on the beaches on either side.... The nearer one approached the higher the ice-walls seemed, and all along the front there were pinnacles and spires weighing several tons, that seemed on the point of toppling every moment. The great b.u.t.tresses of ice that rose first from the water and touched the moraine were as solidly white as marble, veined and streaked with rocks and mud, but farther on, as the pressure was greater, the color slowly deepened to turquoise and sapphire blues."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MUIR GLACIER, ALASKA]

Alexander Badlam, in his "Wonders of Alaska," p. 42, quotes Professor Muir himself as saying that the front and brow of the glacier were "dashed and sculptured into a maze of yawning chasm, ravines, canons, creva.s.ses, and, a bewildering chaos of architectural forms, beautiful beyond the measure of description, and so bewildering in their beauty as to almost make the spectator believe he was revelling in a dream."

"There were," he said, "great cl.u.s.ters of glistening spires, gables, obelisks, monoliths, and castles, standing out boldly against the sky, with bastion and mural, surmounted by fretted cornice, and every interstice and chasm reflecting a sheen of scintillating light and deep-blue shadow, making a combination of color, dazzling, startling, and enchanting."

The next sensation in store for the tourist is the climb to the top of the glacier. All the row-boats were lowered, and about a dozen pa.s.sengers in each, armed with alpenstocks, were ferried in successive groups from the s.h.i.+p to the eastern beach, a distance of perhaps half a mile, instructions being given to each steersman to keep a sharp lookout for falling icebergs. And here your trouble commences unless you are well advised. The ascent is exceedingly difficult; what looks like a mountain of rock over which you must wend your way to the ice-fields, is really a mountain of ice covered by a layer of slimy mud, crusted with pieces of flinty granite, standing up on end like broken bottle gla.s.s on top of a wall. I wore India-rubber high boots when I started, and I needed crutches before I finished. It may be chilly as you leave the s.h.i.+p, according as the sun may be out or in; if chilly, get your escort to carry an extra shawl for you to wrap yourself in when you row back to the s.h.i.+p; if the weather is bright and warm, clothe yourself lightly, for it grows warmer with the glare from the ice and the physical exertion. Be very careful where you step, and if you are wise follow in the footsteps of others; do not undertake to lead, else one foot may be trying to ascertain the depth of a quagmire and the other exploring a fissure.

After an ascent of perhaps two and a half miles, which seem more like ten, you will find yourself on the edge of a frozen sea, frozen, as it were, while in the throes of a tempest, a bay of storm-tossed waves solidified as by a signal; and this extends as far as the eye can reach up into the mountains towards the north, and several miles across to the hills upon the opposite sh.o.r.e. The ice is by no means clear or brilliant, on the contrary, its color is milky and its formation honey-combed, plastic, porous, and yielding to the tread; besides which it is besmeared with sediment from mountain thaws which have traversed its rifts, and disfigured by fallen logs and drift-wood.

I confess if I visited Muir Glacier a hundred times I should always remain on deck and watch the pyrotechnics of the facade rather than undergo the thankless fatigue of climbing to the top, which is infinitely more laborious than the ascent of Vesuvius on foot through the lava, or any work to be done on the trails of the Yosemite. To those who are willing to undertake it, however, I suggest that when they have ascended the first mile, which will bring them on a line with the top of the wall of the glacier, they should look back at their little tiny s.h.i.+p, floating like the "Maid of the Mist" beneath Niagara, to fully realize the immense proportions of the glacier.

It is said that persons have been missed and never again found who made this ascent, and I know that at least one case is authentic, that of a young clergyman, who, straying away from his companions, was never again seen, though the most diligent search was made for him by his friends and the s.h.i.+p's crew. A slip into one of those creva.s.ses which is covered by a thin coat of ice, means to be precipitated in an instant to a depth where no human aid can reach you. In fact, I would advise all who wish to preserve the impression of Muir Glacier in its pure, idealized, unsullied grandeur, to stay aboard and gaze on its beautiful face.

It is a Persian custom, after plucking the fruit, to tear it asunder in the middle, hand the sunny side to the friend and throw the other half away, the best portion being the only part good enough for those they love. It is my duty to present to you the better half of the glacier and to cast away the other. Tired, footsore, and muddy, we were all early in bed, and while dozing to sleep I was much impressed with the awful stillness of the hour; everybody had retired, not even the tread of the man on watch was heard, the very machinery was sleeping, but every now and then there was a splash and a report and an echo that brought with them the proof that the forces of nature were ever awake, and that what was, "is, and ever shall be, world without end."

A SUMMER TRIP TO ALASKA.

JAMES A. HARRISON.

[Nature possesses no scenery more beautiful than that to be found on the Pacific coast of Was.h.i.+ngton and in the island region leading to north Alaska. And the description of it given below is well worth reproduction, for its poetic appreciation of this rich scenic route.]

The whole fourteen hundred--one might say two thousand--miles of coast extending from Puget's Sound to Behring's Strait is a succession of beautiful and picturesque archipelagoes, consisting of hundreds, if not thousands, of islands, through which there are countless water-caves, lakes, bays, inlets, as smooth as Lake George and the Hudson, and far more lovely. The smoothness of the water is such that life on the steamer is a luxurious rest, and the stimulating coolness of the air in summer contributes to pleasant days and delightful nights. Our summer trip covered about two thousand five hundred miles from Portland and back, and we had ample opportunities to stop at the various settlements, talk with the Indians, and collect curiosities.

On leaving Port Townsend early in August, our s.h.i.+p made for the Straits of Georgia, and for a long time followed the aqueous boundary-line between the British and American possessions. The fog dissolved, and we caught views of Smith's Island, Bellingham Bay, and other points. The scenery became river-like, the strait now opening into waveless lakes, now contracting, like the neck of a bottle, into channels where there were counter-currents and chopped seas.

At Active Bay we could not tell which way we were going, the pa.s.sage seemed closed by lofty mountains, and the sea appeared to flow against their bases; but presently the wall of rock split into a wooded gorge, through which we shot with a graceful curve.