n. At last, discouraged, I gave the
signal to move off. So we rounded the curving shore and pushed towards
Glacier Bay. At the far point of the island, a mile from our camping
place, we suddenly discovered Stickeen away out in the water, paddling
calmly and confidently towards our canoe. How he had ever got there I
cannot imagine. I think he must have been taking a long swim out on the
bay for the mere pleasure of it. Muir always insisted that he had
listened to our discussion of the route to be taken, and, with an
uncanny intuition that approached clairvoyance, knew just where to head
us off.

When we took him aboard he went through his usual performance, making
his way, the whole length of the canoe, until he got under Muir's legs,
before shaking himself. No protests or discipline availed, for Muir's
kicks always failed of their pretended mark. To the end of his
acquaintance with Muir, he always chose the vicinity of Muir's legs as
the place to shake himself after a swim.

At Muir Glacier we spent a week this time, making long trips up the
mountains that overlooked the glacier and across its surface. On one
occasion Muir, with the little dog at his heels, crossed entirely in a
diagonal direction the great glacial lake, a trip of some thirty miles,
starting before daylight in the morning and not appearing at camp until
long after dark. Muir always carried several handkerchiefs in his
pockets, but this time he returned without any, having used them all up
making moccasins for Stickeen, whose feet were cut and bleeding from the
sharp honeycomb ice of the glacial surface. This mass of ice is so vast
and so comparatively still that it has but few crevasses, and Muir's day
for traversing it was a perfect one--warm and sunny.

[Illustration: THE FRONT OF MUIR GLACIER

We could understand the constant breaking off and leaping up and
smashing down of the ice, and the formation of the great mass of bergs]

Another day he and I climbed the mountain that overlooked it and
skirted the mighty ice-field for some distance, then walked across the
face of the glacier just back of the rapids, keeping away from the deep
crevasses. We drove a straight line of stakes across the glacial stream
and visited them each day to watch the deflection and curves of the
stakes, and thus arrive at some conception of the rate at which the ice
mass was moving. In some parts of the glacial stream this ice current
flowed as fast as fifty or sixty fee