{113} While Kerr and Christie were away, I assisted the camp hands in advancing to Blossom island. Our first day's work consisted in packing loads across the Hayden glacier to the wooded hills on its western border, reached during the reconnoissance described above. The weather was stormy, and a dense fog rolled in from the ocean, obscuring the mountains, and compelling us to find our way across the glacier as best we could without landmarks. Patiently threading our way among crevasses, we at length came in sight of the forests on the extremity of the mountain spur toward the west, and concluded to camp there until the weather was more favorable. We climbed the bare slope bordering the glacier, and forced our way through the dripping vegetation to an open space beside a little stream and near some aged spruce trees that would furnish good fuel for a camp-fire. We were glad of a refuge, but did not fully appreciate the fact that our tents were in a paradise of flowers until the next morning, when the sun shone clear and bright for a few hours. We hailed with delight the world of summer beauty with which we were surrounded. Our camp was in a little valley amid irregular hills of débris left by the former ice invasion, each of which was a rounded dome of flowers. The desolate ice-fields were completely shut out from view by the rank vegetation. On the slope above us, dark spruce trees loaded with streamers of moss, and seemingly many centuries old, formed a background for the floral decoration with which the ground was everywhere covered. Flowering plants and ferns were massed in such dense luxuriance that the streams were lost in gorgeous banks of bloom. Reluctantly we returned to Floral pass for another load of camp supplies, and late in the afternoon pressed on to Blossom island, where we again pitched our tents in rain and mist, and again, when the storm cleared away, found ourselves in an untrodden paradise. Kerr and Christie rejoined us at Blossom island on July 31, and we were once more ready for an advance. BLOSSOM ISLAND. Our camp on Blossom island was near a small pond of water and close beside a thick grove of spruce trees on the western side of the land-mass. The tents were so placed as to secure an unobstructed view to the westward; and they were visible, in turn, to parties descending from the mountains toward the northwest, whither our work soon led us.