Muir Glacier

Mr. John Muir, the discoverer of the great Muir glacier, writes of "The Alaska Trip" in the Century. Mr. Muir says of the glacier that bears his name: The number of bergs given off varíes somewhat with the weather and the tides. For twelve consecutive hours I counted the number discharged that were large enough to make themselves heard like thunder at a distance of a mile or two, and found the average rate to be one in five or six minutes. The thunder of the largest niay be heard, under favorable circumstances, ten miles or more. When a large mass sinks from the upper fissured portion of the wall, there is first a keen, piereing crash, then a deep, delibérate, ) drawn-out, thundering roar, which ' slowly subsides into a comparatively low, far-reaching, muttering growi: then come a ci'owd of grating, clashing sounds from the agitated bergs that dance in the waves of the newcomer, as if in welcome, and these again arr followed by the swash and roar of the berg-waves as they reach the shore and break among the boulders. But the largest and most beautlful of the bergs, instead of falling from the exposed weathered gortion of the wall, rise from the submerged portion with a still grander commotion, heaving aloft nearly to the top of the wall with awfol roaring, toas cf water streaming like haiv down their sides, while they neave , again and again beforethey sottle in póiae and sail away as blue crystal islands, free at last after ), . tast as part of a slowcrawlj ier for centurïes. And how wondei ful lt seems that the ice formed from pressed snow on the mouñtains two or three hundred years ago Bhould; af ter all its toil and travel in grinding down and fashioning the face of the landscape; still remain pure ar]d {resh ly in color! When the gunahine is pouring and sifting in olora through the midst of all this wilderness of angular crystal ice, snd through the grand, flame-shaped jeta and sheets of radiant spray ever rising ! from the blows of the falling bergs, the eííect is il glorieus.