"What we could know accurately was, that the front of the glacier was two miles across, and that the ice-wall rose 500 and 1,000 feet from the water. The lead cast at the point nearest to the icy front gave eighty fathoms, or 240 feet, of water; and, in the midst of those deep soundings, icebergs filled with boulders lay grounded with forty feet of their summits visible above water. At very low tide, there is a continual crash of falling ice; and, for the half-day we spent beside this glacier, there was a roar as of artillery every few minutes, when tons of ice would go thundering down into the water. After the prosaic matter of lunch had been settled, and we had watched the practical-minded steward order his men down on the iceberg to cut off a week's supply with their axes, we embarked in the life-boats, and landed in a ravine beside the glacier. * * * We wandered at will over the seamed and ragged surface, the ice cracked under our feet with a pleasant midwinter sound, and the wind blew keenly from over those hundreds of miles of glacier fields; but there were the gurgle and hollow roar of the water heard in every deep crevasse, and trickling streams spread a silver network in the sunshine. Reluctantly we obeyed the steamer's whistle, and started back to the boats. "A magnificent sunset flooded the sky that night, and filled every icy ravine with rose and orange lights. At the last view of the glacier, as we steamed away from it, the whole brow was glorified and transfigured with the fires of sunset; the blue and silvery pinnacles, the white and shining front floating dreamlike on a roseate and amber sea, and the range and circle of dull violet mountains lighting their glowing summits into a sky flecked with crimson and gold." Since the above was written, in July, 1883, Glacier Bay has been one of the constant visiting points of the excursion steamer, and the experience of two or three years has shown the company how to exhibit this great panorama of nature to its patrons to the best advantage, and one will now be astonished at the ease with which the whole field may be surveyed in this the most wonderful bay on a line of steamboat travel. Our same correspondent speaks of an unknown passage down which they traveled in a way that will delight the heart of a Nimrod; but he should have added that almost half the inland passage is of that character so far as the general world is wiser concerning it, and half of this, again, may be wholly unknown, offering one of the finest fields for short explorations without any of the dangers and difficulties which so often beset greater undertakings, and rob them of all pleasure while they are being prosecuted, and only compensating the explorer in the results attained. Here is what he has to say: