“What was it?” inquired a dozen eager voices. And then the captain told the group of listeners that when the Corona was here last season, laying just off the Muir glacier, those on board were startled by the sudden appearance of a huge mass of dark crystal, as large as the steamer itself, which shot up from the depths and tossed the ship as though it had been an egg-shell. Passengers were thrown hither and thither, and some were severely bruised. It was a berg broken off from the bottom of the ice mountain, four hundred feet below the surface of the water. Had it struck the ship in its upward passage, immediate destruction must have followed, and the steamer would have sunk as quickly as though she had been blown up with gunpowder. Mount Crillon, Mount La Perouse, and Mount Fairweather are all visible from Glacier Bay, the latter rising in the northwest so high above the intervening hills that all its snowy pinnacles are clearly defined. The great glacier which forms the prominent feature of this bay was named after Professor Muir, state geologist of California. It has a front three miles wide, and has been explored to a distance of forty miles inland. The top surface is tossed and broken by broad fissures so as to be impassable, unless one goes back at least a mile from its toppling and dangerous front. This glacier exceeds anything of the sort this side of the polar zone, and is fed by fifteen other glaciers, so far as it has been explored, towards its source among the lofty snow-fields. In walking upon its surface great care should be observed. A thin crust of snow and half-melted ice is often formed over fissures into which one may easily be precipitated. One of the party from the Corona, a lady, was thus engulfed for a moment, escaping, however, with a thorough wetting and some slight bruises, together with a very large measure of fright. This lady was temporarily in charge of the pilot of the steamer, hence it was very generally remarked that he was doubtless a good ship’s pilot, but a poor one for navigating glaciers. From carefully conducted measurements it is known that this immense body—frost-bound, transparent, and resistless—is moving into the sea, during the summer months, at the rate of forty feet in every twenty-four hours, and discharging in that time one hundred and forty million cubic feet of ice into the bay. It is not necessary for us to discuss the cause of this regular, uniform movement of the enormous mass; it may be brought about by either dilation or gravitation, both of which are most likely active agents to this end, but certain it is that the glacier moves forward as described.