July-August 1879, Alaska Trip Image 27

furrows a little way; cushiony mosses a hundred feet up; the tallest trees 150 ft., the limbs mostly horizontal or drooping in all the spaces. Sounds. Not a leaf stirring; deep hushed repose; one bird, a thrush, singing sweetly, lancing the silence with its cheery humming notes, as the sunshine sifts in thin sunbeams between the boughs, marvelously effective. The whole blessed scene coming into one’s heart as to a home prepared for it. We seem to have known it always. Strange, how strange is this untamed, untouched solitude of the wild free bosom of Alaska, yet how eternally and necessarily familiar then through all, penetrating, saturating all, is the awful hushing sweet-voiced monotone of the stream, like the very voice of God, humanized and terrestrialized. The stream is about 5 feet wide, sunken in the woods 10 or 12 feet, crossed by innumerable log bridges. The trees along the banks lean over across from side to { Sketch: Glacier marked 2d condescending. } [Note by sketch: The impression made by these great glaciers as seen from the main channels in sailing along the coast is always of an extraordinary kind, but vague and fleeting for want of definite outline. They are not suspected of being capable of doing any harm or conferring any benefit; consequently they are simply queer looking and may be {cont}.]https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2406/thumbnail.jp