To view a glacier fifty or more miles wide, as I found at the foot of Mt. St. Elias, winding its way high up into the mountain, where the snow drifts whirl blindly all the summer day, where no plant or animal abide, seems to be in keeping with the surroundings, but to emerge from a dense thicket, a valley teeming with animal and vegetable life, on a hot summer day and fall spat upon a dead glacier is a sight which must be seen to be realized--then to know that this vast field of ice once extended to the sea, but so long ago that thousands of acres of timber have grown up in its retreating pathway, is enough to astound any but the simple. I was lost in thought and pondered thus: In time this ice mountain will waste away to its fountain head and a peaceful river will flow down this warm valley, where the inhabitants on either side of the river will be as unable to realize the truth concerning the cold bed-fellow that once slept in this Alaskan cradle, as we are unable to comprehend the fact that there is not a spire in Chicago high enough to have shown its tip above the ice that once lay over that city during the Great Lakes' Glacial Period. The earth between us and the glacier was carpeted with the most beautiful moss imaginable, all shades and colors, caused by reflection of the sun from the crystal ice. A solemn silence prevailed, such as I never experienced elsewhere, broken at intervals by reports like cannons, occasioned by huge mountains of ice cleaving off to melt in the sun. In climbing the mountain side to get upon the glacier, I found ripe strawberries within a few feet of the ice, and upon the glacier small streams of water, which did not seem to melt the ice. Like all glaciers, there were great boulders upon it, which had plunged down from some far away mountain and were taking a slow cold ride. I jumped across crevices, where if one should fall in he might go down 100 feet, there to wedge in and freeze. Standing in front of this terrible monster a cool strange halo seems to surround, which is far more awe-inspiring than that of the Niagara Falls.