One could have passed days in studying the grandeur and beauty of the Muir glacier, in watching its slow but steady advance, its tremendous avalanches, its rolling, thunder-like discharges, its irregular, translucent front decked with amethyst and opal hues by the afternoon sunlight, but time was to be considered, the day was closing, and we finally steamed reluctantly away. Even after we had lost sight of the great frozen river, we heard its evening guns echoing among the mountains, faint and fitful from the growing distance. We pause for a moment, thoughtfully, to recall the brief hours passed in that boreal atmosphere, crowded to repletion with wonderful experiences, where the ice deposited during the glacial period is slowly wasting and wearing away, exposing giant cedars which have been buried for ages upon ages, a revelation and a process which we may nowhere else behold. There is no touch of civilization here; the quiet and solitude is unbroken, save by the thunder of the bergs breaking their long imprisonment. Somehow one feels older, grayer, sadder, after witnessing these great and startling throes of Nature, phenomena which have been in operation thousands of years. It reminds the observer only too forcibly how infinitesimal is the space he occupies upon this planet, and how utterly insignificant is his personality in the vast scheme of the universe. Travel, while teaching us numberless grand and beautiful truths, solving many mysteries and vastly enlarging our mental grasp, does not fail also to impress upon the most conceited the important and priceless lesson of humility. But let us banish brooding thoughts, and be glad for a little space; to-morrow the night cometh! Among the evidences of the slow but steady receding of the glacier we have Vancouver’s record that he was unable to enter this bay in 1793, which is now navigable for over twelve miles inland. Once the ice field was level with the mountain tops, now it has melted until the peaks are far above its surface. Professor Muir tells us that in the earlier days of the ice-age this glacier stood at a height of from three to four thousand feet above its present level! Centuries hence the place of the glacier will doubtless be occupied by a flowing river, and the land will have entirely thrown aside its mantle of ice and snow. What a revelation this bay would have been to Agassiz! After an arduous half day’s climb, from the summit of the Muir glacier nearly thirty others are to be seen in various directions, all steadily forcing their resistless way towards the sea, slowly consummating the purpose of their existence. How far glacial action has been concerned in determining the topographical conditions of the globe will long be, as it has long been, a subject for deep scientific study.