hiefly I was engrossed in the great drama which was being acted
before me by the glacier itself. It was the battle of gravity with
flinty hardness and strong cohesion. The stage setting was perfect; the
great hall formed by encircling mountains; the side curtains of
dark-green forest, fold on fold; the gray and brown top-curtains of the
mountain heights stretching clear across the glacier, relieved by vivid
moss and flower patches of yellow, magenta, violet and crimson. But the
face of the glacier was so high and rugged and the ice so pure that it
showed a variety of blue and purple tints I have never seen
surpassed--baby-blue, sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise, cobalt, indigo,
peacock, ultra-marine, shading at the top into lilac and amethyst. The
base of the glacier-face, next to the dark-green water of the bay,
resembled a great mass of vitriol, while the top, where it swept out of
the canyon, had the curves and tints and delicate lines of the iris.

[Illustration: TAKU GLACIER

There followed an excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier
Bay, with its three living glaciers]

But the glacier front was not still; in form and color it was changing
every minute. The descent was so steep that the glacial rapids above the
bay must have flowed forward eighty or a hundred feet a day. The ice
cliff, towering a thousand feet over the water, would present a slight
incline from the perpendicular inwards toward the canyon, the face being
white from powdered ice, the result of the grinding descent of the ice
masses. Here and there would be little cascades of this fine ice
spraying out as they fell, with glints of prismatic colors when the
sunlight struck them. As I gazed I could see the whole upper part of the
cliff slowly moving forward until the ice-face was vertical. Then, foot
by foot it would be pushed out until the upper edge overhung the water.
Now the outer part, denuded of the ice powder, would present a face of
delicate blue with darker shades where the mountain peaks cast their
shadows. Suddenly from top to bottom of the ice cliff two deep lines of
prussian blue appeared. They were crevasses made by the ice current
flowing more rapidly in the center of the stream. Fascinated, I watched
this great pyramid of blue-veined onyx lean forward until it became a
tower of Pisa, with fragments falling thick and fast from its upper apex
and from the cliffs out of which it had been split. Breathless and
anxious, I awaited the