CHAPTER XV

THE WORK THAT GLACIERS DO

The next morning the sea was as calm and placid as if its surface had never been ruffled by a gale, and the canoe pushed along at a good rate of speed. During the early part of the afternoon Jack saw on a long, low rock, close to which the canoe would pass, a number of shore birds, running here and there, busily feeding at the edge of the water, but did not recognize them, and asked Fannin what they were. After a close look, Fannin replied: "Those here are turnstones; those others seem to be black oyster catchers."

"Oh!" said Jack, "try and kill some of them please. I have never seen either bird. I know the oyster catcher of the Atlantic coast, for I have seen several that were killed on Long Island. I should like to have some of these birds in my hand."

Fannin got his gun ready and presently fired both barrels at the birds, and in a few moments Jack was admiring them, and comparing each sort with its corresponding species of the Atlantic coast. Before the gun was fired, he had noticed that the oyster catchers acted very much like those he had seen on Long Island. They had the same sharp whistle and ran along the shore in the same way; but these in his hand were entirely black, while those that he had seen in the East were brownish with much white, and only a little black.

During the day they saw many old squaw ducks, which Jack knew in the East only as winter birds.

About the middle of the afternoon the wind rose again, and began to blow so violently that it was necessary to go ashore and camp. At the point where they landed, deer seemed to be plenty, and the beach was dotted in many places with their tracks, made during the day. The recent rains, however, had made the underbrush quite wet, and as there was plenty of fresh meat in camp, there seemed no special reason for hunting.

During the night a deer passed along the beach near the tent, and when he had come close to the place where Charlie had made his bed, the animal saw the tent or smelt its occupants, stopped and stood for a while, and then jumped over Charlie, running off with long bounds, into the forest.

The next morning the wind still blew hard, and it was uncertain whether the party could get away or not. The two Indians therefore asked permission to hunt, and Fannin loaned his rifle to Jimmie. An hour or two later Hamset returned without anything; but a little later Jimmie came in with a broad grin on his face, his clothes in tatters. He was soaked to the skin, but in a high state of delight, for he had killed a deer--his first. He was quite exhausted, for he had carried the animal quite a long way through the woods down to the beach, where he had left it, unable to bring it farther. Fannin and Charlie at once went off to get it; and while they were gone, the boy, in a mixture of Chinook, English, and signs, told Hugh and Jack the story of his hunt. He had gone a long way through the forest, but at last had seen a deer feeding, and crept up close to it. It had looked at him. He had fired twice at it, the last time striking it in the throat and breaking its neck, and it had fallen dead. He ended his account with a loud shout of laughter and the words: "_Hai-asmowitch_ (big deer), me kill." Later in the day he confided to Fannin the information that "the hearts of his friends were very good toward him because he had killed a deer that was big and fat."

As they coasted along the shore that day they saw a blue grouse sitting on a rock, on a small island, and landing found about a dozen full-grown birds. The shot-gun accounted for four or five of them, and Jack and Hugh shot the heads off several more that took refuge in the branches of the trees. Food, therefore, was now plenty.

As they were passing near the mouth of the Hotham Sound, and close to the shores of Hardy and Nelson Islands, the remarkable Twin Falls, just within the entrance of the Sound, came into view. They seemed so attractive that it was decided to visit them on their return trip. On rounding a point on the shore of Hardy Island, two moving objects, on a low seaweed-covered point half a mile ahead, were seen. For a time they puzzled Indians and white men alike. They were not deer, for they were too low; nor bears, for the color was not right; nor seals, for they had neither the shape nor the movements of those animals. So there was much guessing at random as to what they were. But at last, when the canoe had come close enough for the creatures to be seen distinctly, white men and Indians made them out to be eagles. They were young birds, so young and inexperienced, in fact, that they permitted the canoe to approach within fifty feet of them without moving from their places, and when at last they did consent to disturb themselves the canoe was within thirty or forty feet of them. Then one flew to a pine, a few yards distant, while the other hopped on a log six feet from where he had been sitting, and surveyed the canoe with the utmost indifference. Though full-grown they had probably never seen white men before. They had been feeding on a dog-fish, which lay there among the seaweed, still breathing and writhing, although the birds had torn a great hole in its side.

That night camp was made on Nelson Island. It rained very hard, and everything became wet. There was a fine chance for grumbling at the weather if they wanted to, but these were old travellers, and accustomed to meet with philosophy whatever fortune sent them in the way of weather and discomfort. Besides this, they were getting used to rain, for some had fallen every day since they had reached the head of Bute Inlet. The next day they would enter Jervis Inlet, of whose beauties they had heard so much that they thought it would be almost as wonderful as Bute. A study of the Admiralty charts, with which Fannin had provided himself before leaving Victoria, and which were carried in a tin case in the provision chest, seemed to confirm all that they had heard of Jervis; and it was with anxious hearts and earnest hopes for good weather that the party went to bed that night.

They were not disappointed. The day dawned fair, an early start was made, and they paddled toward the mouth of the Inlet. For some miles a long point ahead of them cut off the view of the Inlet, and when they passed this point, its beauties were revealed as a real surprise to them. Directly before them, but on the farther side of the Inlet, rose a superb snow cone, five thousand feet in height; and beyond that could be seen a broad bay leading up to a narrow dark green forest, closely shut in between two ranges of mountains, far down whose sides extended the white mantle which in this region crowns every considerable height.

A little farther on the travellers found themselves directly in front of Marlborough Heights, mountains which, even in this land of grand scenery are unequalled for majesty. Two of them rise almost sheer from the water's edge to a height of over sixty-one hundred feet, and the third, standing a little farther back from the water, lifts its great head between the two, as if looking over its brothers' shoulders. The summits of these do not run up into peaks and needles of rock, but appear rather like blunt cones of solid granite. There is a little timber on the slopes, but except for this nothing is to be seen but the black rocks. Scarcely a patch of snow was visible, for the unceasing winds, which blow on these lofty peaks, sweep the snow into the valleys and lower lands before it can lay hold on the smooth bare granite. Some of these peaks rise in unbroken cliffs. Other heights come down to the water's edge in a long series of steps, many of them showing the rounded, smoothing action of the great glacier which passed over them as it cut out this cañon.

Down near the water, tall grass and underbrush grow among these dark, rounded, naked rocks, which look like the backs of so many great elephants sleeping in a jungle, whose growth is not tall enough to hide them.

Though for the most part narrow,--not more than a mile in width,--the Inlet often broadens out and has a lake-like appearance, especially where side valleys come down into it, showing the course of tributary streams of the old glacier.

At Deserted Bay, a little river enters the Inlet, and at its mouth is a wide stretch of meadow land.

Long before they reached this point something white could be seen on the shore. Hugh and Jack were curious to know what it could be, and appealed to Fannin and the Indians for information. No one could tell, and the glasses only made the white objects appear a little larger. Gradually, however, as the canoe approached them, it was seen that here was an Indian village and a burial place, and that the white objects were the white cloth coverings of the crosses and the houses of the dead. There seemed to be no one at the village, and the canoe did not stop, but kept on until sunset, reaching a level, grassy piece of land at the mouth of a mountain torrent, where the party put ashore and camped.

Evidently this was a favorite camping-ground, for there were found here the remains of fires, a rude shanty put up for protection against the weather, many old poles, and a scaffold erected for the purpose of drying fish.

Down the side of the mountains came thundering the large stream which had formed the little flat where they camped, and which was more than a brook and rather less than a river.

After camp had been made, Hugh, Fannin, and Jack climbed the mountain for a few hundred feet along the stream's course, and they were greatly impressed by the tumultuous rush with which it tumbled from pool to pool in tempestuous descent. The hillside was so steep that climbing was done by pulling one's self up by the trees, underbrush, and rocks. The ever rising spray of the torrent had moistened the earth, grass, and moss, making the ground so slippery that it was often difficult to keep one's footing. The stream made leaps of twenty, forty, and fifty feet at a time, falling with a dull sullen roar into the deep rocky basins which it had dug out for itself, making the milk-white foam which they contained surge and whirl over and over in unceasing motion. The constant moisture of the stream nourished a rank growth of vegetation. Rocks and fallen tree trunks were covered by a thick growth of long, pale green moss, into which the feet sank ankle deep, and from which water could be wrung as from a well-soaked sponge. In the crevices of the rocks grew bunches of tall grasses, sparkling with drops of water, as though there had been a rain storm. Everywhere there were tall flower stalks, brilliant with blossoms of yellow or blue. Back from the bed of the stream grew a thick tangle of undergrowth and young trees, which it would have been very hard to penetrate.

Many questions suggested themselves to Jack during the climb. But the noise of the fall was so great that it was impossible to hear conversation, and it was not until they had reached camp that he was able to try to inform himself in regard to any of the matters about which he had wished to ask.

That night as they sat around the fire after dinner, he said to Fannin and Hugh: "I want to know how these big arms of the sea came to be formed. Why is it that every little way here we find an immense cañon running away back into the mountains, and the sea ebbing and flowing in it? Of course there's some reason for it. I don't understand what it is, but somebody must know."

Hugh smoked in silence for a few moments, and then, taking his pipe from his mouth and clearing his throat, said: "Yes, somebody must know, of course, and I expect to them that does know, it's mighty simple. I expect likely your uncle, Mr. Sturgis, knows about all these things, but I don't. I've got an idea from what I've heard him say, and from what I've seen up in the northern countries, that these big cañons were cut out by glaciers,--these big masses of ice, very heavy, and moving along all the time. It's easy for any one who has ever been around a glacier to see something of the terrible power that such a mass of ice has, and to see how it cuts and grinds away the surface of the earth and rock that it passes over. You've heard, and I've heard your uncle talk about these here cañons on the coast of Norway, that, from his tell, seem about just like these that we are travelling up and down, except that maybe these are bigger. We can all understand that if a very big glacier got running in a certain course, and kept running for thousands and thousands of years, it would cut out in the surface of the mountains a deep, narrow groove that might be like these cañons; but as I say, I don't know anything about them. I'm just guessing from what I've heard say."

"Well," said Fannin, "I don't know much about them either, but judging from what I've read, you're about on the right track. The books I've read say that there was a time, a good way back, when the whole of the northern part of North America was covered with a big sheet of ice, thousands of feet thick. That is what was called the glacial period, or ice age. This ice, if I understand it, was thicker towards the north--where it was piling up all the time, and getting still thicker--than it was toward the south, where the climate was milder, and where it was melting all the time. Now, although ice seems to us, who perhaps don't know much about it, about as firm and solid as anything can be, yet really it is not so. Learned men have made lots of experiments, which show that ice will change its form; and we all know that these glaciers that we see here are moving all the time, and, what's more, that they are moving faster in the middle than they are at the sides, where they rub against the mountains; in other words, where there is friction. That shows that ice is plastic, somewhat we'll say like molasses in January. It will flow, but it flows very slowly, and to make it flow at all the pressure on it may have to be very great. In other words, there's got to be a great force behind it, pushing it. Now the books say, that in the time of the ice age the sheet of ice that covered the country, being thick toward the north and thin toward the south, was constantly moving slowly from north to south; and I think the men that have studied them have seen in the scratches that the ice sheet made on the rocks and in the gravel and boulders and so on, that it carried along with it from one place to another strong evidence of this motion. Then, after a while, as I understand it, the weather got warmer, the ice sheet kept melting faster and faster from the south toward the north, and gradually the land got bare of ice. Of course it melted first on the lower lands, and last on the hills and mountains and peaks. It melted very slowly, and as it melted it left behind it on the mountains and in sheltered places where it was coldest, masses of ice which continued to flow along as ice streams, long after the general ice sheet had disappeared. These masses that were left did not move from north to south, because they were no longer being pushed in that direction. They just flowed down hill.

"If I understand it, there is only one place now in the world, in the North at least, that is covered by an ice sheet, and that's Greenland. But in the Northern mountains there are still a lot of remnants of the old ice sheet, and it is these remnants, I think, only thousands of times more powerful than they are now, that cut out these inlets that we are travelling over.

"We think that these are mighty deep, and so they are; but maybe you don't recognize how much depth there is below the water. Sometimes these inlets are sixty or eighty fathoms deep. There's from three hundred and fifty to five hundred feet from the surface of the water to the bottom of the Inlet, and nobody knows how deep the mud may be there before you could reach the bed-rock below it."

"I am very glad to know this," said Jack. "Most of it I have heard before; it sounds pretty familiar, but I never before heard it in such a connected way, and I never understood just what it meant. It seems to me pretty clear now, all except one point that I want to ask about. We all know how easily ice slips down over any surface, and there doesn't seem to be much friction. Now I can't understand just how the ice should cut out such a groove in the earth in any length of time, however long it might be. How is that? Can you explain it to me?"

For a little while Fannin sat thoughtfully staring into the fire, and then he replied: "Well, I think I understand it myself, and I think I can make you understand it as I do, but of course I do not guarantee that I am right about it. I only give you my idea.

"Suppose you take a piece of pine board and tilt it up and brace it to represent the side of your mountain. Then suppose you take a strip of paper, two inches wide, and we'll say of an indefinite length, because you've got to draw that paper down over that board, for say a thousand years, and never let it stop; for the glacier never stops, it is always being renewed at its head, and keeps on pushing down the mountain sides, just as a brook does that starts from a spring on a hilltop. Now, you might draw that paper down over that board for a thousand years, if you lived so long, and you would never wear much of a groove in the board. If you did wear one, it would be awful slow work. But now suppose, in the place of that strip of paper, you have a strip of sandpaper, just as wide, and just as long, and keep drawing that down for a thousand years, you can see that long before your thousand years were over you would have cut a big groove in the board, and in time, of course, you'd cut through the board. That, according to my understanding, is the way that the glacier acts. It isn't the ice by itself that cuts out the groove, but the ice is constantly picking up and rolling along under it fragments of rock and pebbles, and sand, and grinding these hard substances against the hard rock that makes up the faces of the mountains. So it is sawing down into the mountains all the time.

"Did you ever go into a marble yard and see the people cutting the stone into blocks there? They have metal saws that go backward and forward, sawing on the marble, but if they had nothing but the metal to saw with, they would wear out their saws before they would saw the marble, so they put fine sand between the saw and the marble; and that sand, moving backward and forward, cuts through the marble pretty nearly as a knife cuts through cheese. We have seen here, and you have very likely seen in other places, how the water that comes out from under a glacier is white or gray. That is, it is full of something held in suspension in the water, and that something is the fine powder which is ground off the pebbles and rocks that are being pushed along under the glacier, and ground off the face of the mountains too. It's what you might call flour of rock. That's my idea of how the glaciers cut these deep grooves. We've seen, as we did just below here, lots of great, rounded rocks, on the shore, and we've seen in a number of places, big scratches in the rocks; and these scratches, I suppose, were made by some big chunk of rock, pushed along under the mass of the ice and scratching against the face of the mountains, gouging out quite a furrow in the rock. I don't know that I can explain it any plainer than that. Of course, it's a big subject."

"Well," said Jack, "I don't see how anything could be plainer than that; and it seems to me that I understand just exactly how the thing is done. I suppose sometime, when I go to college, I will get a chance to find out all about these things; and when I do, it will be a mighty good help to me to have seen these things here and to have had your explanation. I couldn't think how the ice, by itself, could cut out these grooves, and yet I believe I have had it all explained to me before; but never, I think, by such clear examples. That explanation of the sandpaper makes it mighty clear."

"Well," said Fannin, "we saw at the head of Bute Inlet a lot of these glaciers. Of course they were high up on the mountains, and mighty small compared with the ice that must have cut out these inlets; still, I believe if we could get up close to them we would see pretty clearly how they work, and you'd understand the whole thing a great deal better than you do now. If I were you, I'd be on the watch for things that have a bearing on this work of the ice, and if you keep the thing in your mind, it will be likely to work itself out very clearly."

"Well," said Hugh, "I think I begin to savvy this glacier business, a little, myself. Fannin has, sure, given us a pretty good explanation."

For a number of days, Jack, Hugh, and Fannin had been studying the charts with much interest, speculating about Princess Louise Inlet, a tiny branch, only four or five miles long, which puts off from the head of Jervis Inlet. On the chart, its entrance appeared a mere thread, but within it widened and seemed to be several miles in length, though not very wide, while at its head were one or two quite high mountains. This inlet they reached the next day.

It was yet early morning when, coasting along close to the shore, they saw a narrow break in the precipice under which they were passing. As they advanced, they saw that it stretched some distance inland. This, they believed, must be the entrance to Princess Louise Inlet, but no one knew. It was almost low water and a current of considerable force was drawing out of the narrow channel. The men landed, and Fannin and Hamset walked a little way up the beach to see whether the passage was practicable or not. They were soon turned back, by coming up against the vertical walls of the precipice, but the Indians declared that if they started now they could go through.

Re-embarking, the canoe was pushed up into the narrow channel, where now the water seemed to be almost still, and a few strokes of the paddle sent the vessel in between high walls, which could almost be touched by an outstretched paddle from either side of the boat. Out in the main Inlet the sun had been warm and bright, but here the water, shadowed by the tall rocks which rose on either side, was overhung by a thick, cold mist. Although passing along close under the walls of the Inlet on either side, they could only occasionally see them, and they groped along aimlessly, not knowing where they were going. The sun does not penetrate this narrow gorge until it has risen high in the heavens, and in the darkness and utter silence of their surroundings, the place seemed very solemn. The strangeness of the situation awed them all, and hardly a word was spoken, or if one ventured a remark he spoke in a low tone.

Hamset in the bow was keenly on the lookout for rocks or obstructions of any kind, but the chart had said "Deep water," for the Inlet, and they paddled on with confidence. As they advanced the mist grew thicker and the canoe's bow could not be seen from the stern. No sound was heard save the regular dip of the paddles, and each one of the crew was wrought into a high state of expectancy, not knowing what the next moment might bring forth.

An hour after their entrance into this twilight, the mist before them grew a little lighter, and in a few moments, without any warning, the dark curtain was lifted from the water and rolled away up the mountain sides. The mist rose slowly, and there appeared, first the trees on the beach, then, immediately back of them, the piled-up rocks which had fallen from the precipice; and lastly, as the clouds and vapor rose higher and higher, the black vertical cliffs and snow-clad peaks of the mountains.

In a few moments not a cloud or a trace of mist was to be seen, except in one long, narrow ravine where it still remained, shut in by high walls of granite.

The Indians continued the regular movements of their paddles, but those of the white men were idle, and for some little time not a word was spoken. Before them was a basin, which they were now entering, less than a quarter of a mile in width. All about them was an unbroken line of snow--here close at hand, there miles away--patched toward its lower border with occasional masses of green or gray. Beneath the edge of the snow line was the sombre gray of the mountain side, dark and forbidding. Still farther down the slope scanty and ill-nourished timber grew in scattering clumps or single trees, down to the verge of the precipices that overhung the water's edge. To the south and east the hills rose sharply and continuously, forming an unbroken wall until the snow level was reached; but toward the northeast this wall did not exist, and a wide but steep valley, the ancient bed of a tremendous glacier, stretched away for miles toward the snowy heights of the interior. The water before them seemed like a beautiful lake lying among the mountain peaks. In its unruffled surface each detail of the walls of rock that shut it in on every hand was mirrored with faithful accuracy.

Down the great valley which opened to the northeast, among, over, and under enormous masses of rock, whose harsh and rugged outlines were softened by no appearance of verdure, a large river, the course of which could be traced far back toward the heights, poured, in a series of white falls. They could watch it until it became no more than a delicate white thread, and at last it could not be distinguished from the snowdrifts that lay in the ravine near its source.

Beyond this valley, to the north, the rocks again became steep with overhanging precipices rising from the water's edge. About them great snow fields stretched away toward Mount Albert, showing here and there, by their broken white or sky-blue color some ice river that ploughed its way down the slope.

It took the white men some time to take in all the Inlet's details, and to become accustomed to their tremendous surroundings. At last Hugh turned to Jack, and said: "Son, did you ever imagine a place like this?"

"No," said Jack, "I never had a notion that in all the world there was anything like this,--so grand and so beautiful. It makes one feel as if he dare not speak aloud. It comes pretty near like being in church."

"Right you are," said Hugh. "I don't believe I ever felt so solemn in my whole life. Did you ever see such rocks, or such snow, or such a river as that one over there? Did you ever see anything that seemed to you as big as this does? I thought I had been in sightly places, and seen high mountains, but this beats them all."

"It's a wonderful sight," said Fannin, from the bow. "I've lived twenty years in British Columbia, but this beats anything I've ever seen."

"Yes," said Hugh. "It's something that you can't talk about much, in fact. A man is poor for words here."

"And just think," said Jack, "how cold and dark it was when we started in, and then how suddenly the light and beauty of everything came to us."

"Yes," said Fannin, "but that's not so surprising. You see this inlet is so narrow and shut in on every side by high mountains, that the air here does not feel the sun until near midday. The temperature of this place must be a good deal lower than that of its surroundings; but just as soon as the air is warmed up it rises and carries the mist away with it."

"Oh, Hugh," said Jack, "look at these rocks here, where the sun strikes them. Don't they look as if they were painted? See that patch of yellow there--just about the color of a canary bird. Part of that is reflection from the water, I guess; and I suppose it must be some moss growing on the rock that gives that rich color. Then there is a red brown, that looks like iron rust, Sometimes it is red, and sometimes it is yellow, and sometimes it is brown, and again it is red. And then, see the flowers and plants up there! There's a fern growing from a crack in the rock, and there are some mosses, some of them brown, some goldcolor, and some bright green. There's a red flower! Look at that cluster of hare-bells! What a contrast all that brilliant light and color is to the white and the gray of those outstanding mountains!"

"Well," said Fannin, "I suppose we ought to be moving, for we should paddle up to the head and get back to the Inlet in time to go out with the ebb. The Indians say that at half tide the water runs so swiftly in that narrow channel that it is dangerous."

"Come on, then," said Hugh. "I hate to think of anything but this show that is before us; and I'd like mighty well to camp here for one night, but I suppose we haven't got the time."

"Yes," said Jack, "we've got to think of what is coming to-morrow, of course; but I do hate to leave this place."

They dipped their paddles into the water, and the canoe moved swiftly over its glassy surface. As they paddled on, Jack suddenly called: "There's a seal, the first living thing I've seen in here!" From time to time the seal showed his smooth round head above the water, not far from the canoe.

A few moments later Hugh called out: "There's a brood of ducks in there, near the shore!"

"Where are they?" asked Jack; "I don't see them."

"There," said Hugh, "close into the shore you can see them or their shadows, though they are a good deal blurred and made indistinct by the reflection of the trees above them."

"Yes," said Jack, "there seems to be mighty little life visible here. Down toward the mouth of the Inlet I have once or twice seen a gull, but beyond these things and the starfish, clinging to the rocks, there's mighty little that speaks of life."

Near the head of the Inlet Fannin got out the longest fishing lines that they had, and, tying a few rifle cartridges to it, let it down over the side of the canoe, trying to find the bottom, but he was unable to reach it.

On the way back toward the mouth of the inlet they paddled along close to the shore, in many places under the cliffs which overhung the water. Here it was possible to examine them closely and to study their details, and Jack was astonished to see how much vegetation they supported and how varied was the life that they exhibited. Everywhere near the water the granite was patched with lichens of different kinds and different colors, giving a brilliant effect to the rocks. Near the mouth of the inlet they landed on a low point of shore that ran out, and stood there for a little while, taking a farewell look at the narrow fiord. It was an impressive sight, and with full hearts the white men turned their backs on the wonders they had seen and took their way back out into the broad channel of Jervis Inlet.