t a day, and we could understand the
constant breaking off and leaping up and smashing down of the ice and
the formation of that great mass of bergs.

Shortly before we left Muir Glacier, I saw Muir furiously angry for the
first and last time in my acquaintance with him. We had noticed day
after day, whenever the mists admitted a view of the mountain slopes,
bands of mountain goats looking like little white mice against the green
of the high pastures. I said to Joe, the hunter, one morning: "Go up and
get us a kid. It will be a great addition to our larder."

He took my breech-loading rifle and went. In the afternoon he returned
with a fine young buck on his shoulders. While we were examining it he
said:

"I picked the fattest and most tender of those that I killed."

"What!" I exclaimed, "did you kill more than this one?"

He put up both hands with fingers extended and then one finger:

"_Tatlum-pe-ict_ (eleven)," he replied.

Muir's face flushed red, and with an exclamation that was as near to an
oath as he ever came, he started for Joe. Luckily for that Indian he saw
Muir and fled like a deer up the rocks, and would not come down until he
was assured that he would not be hurt. I shared Muir's indignation and
would have enjoyed seeing him administer the richly deserved thrashing.

Muir had a strong aversion to taking the life of any animal; although he
would eat meat when prepared, he never killed a wild animal; even the
rattlesnakes he did not molest during his rambles in California. Often
his softness of heart was a source of some annoyance and a great deal of
astonishment to our natives; for he would take pleasure in rocking the
canoe when they were trying to get a bead on a flock of ducks or a deer
standing on the shore.

On leaving the mouth of Glacier Bay we spent a week or more exploring
the inlets and glaciers to the west. These days were rainy and cold. We
groped blindly into unknown, unmapped, fog-hidden fiords and bayous,
exploring them to their ends and often making excursions to the glaciers
above them.

The climax of the trip, however, was the last glacier we visited, Taylor
Glacier, the scene of Muir's great adventure with Stickeen. We reached
this fine glacier in the afternoon of a very stormy day. We were
approaching the open Pacific, and the _saanah_, the southeast rain-wind,
was howling through the narrow entrance into Cross Sound. For twenty
miles we had been facing strong head winds and