resting discovery was that it had recently
advanced, though again slightly receding. A portion of the terminal
moraine had been plowed up and shoved forward, uprooting and
overwhelming the woods on the east side. Many of the trees were down and
buried, or nearly so, others were leaning away from the ice-cliffs,
ready to fall, and some stood erect, with the bottom of the ice plow
still beneath their roots and its lofty crystal spires towering high
above their tops. The spectacle presented by these century-old trees
standing close beside a spiry wall of ice, with their branches almost
touching it, was most novel and striking. And when I climbed around the
front, and a little way up the west side of the glacier, I found that it
had swelled and increased in height and width in accordance with its
advance, and carried away the outer ranks of trees on its bank.

On our way back to camp after these first observations I planned a
far-and-wide excursion for the morrow. I awoke early, called not only by
the glacier, which had been on my mind all night, but by a grand
flood-storm. The wind was blowing a gale from the north and the rain
was flying with the clouds in a wide passionate horizontal flood, as if
it were all passing over the country instead of falling on it. The main
perennial streams were booming high above their banks, and hundreds of
new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty gray walls of
the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a cup of
coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when
I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of
Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful
to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them,
rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and
chanting with the old Norsemen, "The blast of the tempest aids our oars,
the hurricane is our servant and drives us whither we wish to go." So,
omitting breakfast, I put a piece of bread in my pocket and hurried
away.

Mr. Young and the Indians were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen;
but I had not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in the tent and
came boring through the blast after me. That a man should welcome
storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God
making landscapes, is reasonable enough; but what fascination could
there be in such tremendous weather for a do