"Muir Glacier is a spectacle whose grandeur can not be described,--a vast frozen river of ice, ever slowly moving to the sea, and piling the enormous masses higher between the mountain banks, until their summit towers hundreds of feet in the air. Where the point of the glacier pushes out into and overhangs the water, vast fragments breaking apart every few moments of their own weight, and falling with a thundering crash into the sea, to float away as enormous icebergs, it affords a spectacle which can only be understood and appreciated by one who beholds it with his own eyes. From the summit of Muir Glacier no less than twenty-nine others are to be seen in various directions, all grinding and crowding their huge masses toward the sea, a sight which must certainly be one which few other scenes can equal." [Illustration: SCENES AMONG THE ALASKAN GLACIERS. (From Photographs.) No. 1 (Top). A Near View of the Terminal Front of the Muir Glacier. No. 2. Looking Seaward from the Surface of the Glacier. No 3. The Excursion Steamer at the Front of the Glacier. No. 4 (Bottom). On the Great Frozen Sea; a Near View of the Surface of the Glacier.] Says a writer, Mr. Edward Roberts, in the _Overland Monthly_: "I do not know how wide, nor how long, nor how deep Glacier Bay is. One does not think of figures and facts when sailing over its waters and enjoying the novel features. Flood Switzerland, and sail up some of its canons toward Mont Blanc, and you will have there another Glacier Bay. But until the sea-waves wash the feet of that Swiss peak, and until one can sail past the glaciers of that country, there will never be found a companion bay to this of Alaska. Norway, with all its ruggedness, has nothing to equal it; and there is not a mountain in all the ranges of the Rockies which has the majestic gracefulness of Fairweather Peak, which looks down upon the bay.