. Alaska ... Natural history; Scientific expeditions. RUSSELL FIORD 57 clinging to the steep sides of the mountain or breaking over its cliffs and yet falling not, hanging there like a con- gealed torrent, a silent and motionless shadow. The eye seems baffled. Surely it is plunging or will plunge the next second; but no, there it is fixed; it bends over the brink, it foams below, but no sound is heard and no move- ment is apparent. You see the corrugated surface where it emerges from its great snow reservoir on the mountain summit; it shows deep crevasses where it sweeps down a steep incline,
. Alaska ... Natural history; Scientific expeditions. RUSSELL FIORD 57 clinging to the steep sides of the mountain or breaking over its cliffs and yet falling not, hanging there like a con- gealed torrent, a silent and motionless shadow. The eye seems baffled. Surely it is plunging or will plunge the next second; but no, there it is fixed; it bends over the brink, it foams below, but no sound is heard and no move- ment is apparent. You see the corrugated surface where it emerges from its great snow reservoir on the mountain summit; it shows deep crevasses where it sweeps down a steep incline, then curves across a terrace, then leaps in solid fixed foam down the face of the cliff, to which it seems bound as by some magic. These precipice glaciers apparently move no faster than those in the val- ley. It is in all cases a subtle invis- ible move- ment like that of the astronomic bodies. It would seem as if gravity had little to do with it. They do not gain momentum like an avalanche of snow or earth but creep so slowly that to the looker-on they are as motion- less as the rocks themselves. The grade, the obstacles in the way, seem to make no difference. One would think that if a mass of ice, weighing many thousand tons, hang- ing upon the face of a mountain wall steeper than a house roof, detached itself from the rest at all and began to move, it would gain momentum and presently shoot down, as the loosened ice and snow do from our slate roofs. But it does not. If the temperature of the rocks were suddenly raised as in the case of the roof, no doubt. SHIP AT EDGE OF DRIFT ICE, YAKUTAT Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Harriman Alaska Expedition (1899); Harriman, Edward Henry, 1848-1909; Merriam, C. Hart (Clinton Hart), 1855-1942; Washington Academy of Sciences (Washington, D. C.
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectnatural, bookyear1901
