the glacier was seen from shore to shore with a bright array of
encompassing mountains partly revealed, wearing the clouds as garments,
while the prairie bloomed and sparkled with irised light from myriads of
washed crystals. Then suddenly all the glorious show would be darkened
and blotted out.

Stickeen seemed to care for none of these things, bright or dark, nor
for the crevasses, wells, moulins, or swift flashing streams into which
he might fall. The little adventurer was only about two years old, yet
nothing seemed novel to him, nothing daunted him. He showed neither
caution nor curiosity, wonder nor fear, but bravely trotted on as if
glaciers were playgrounds. His stout, muffled body seemed all one
skipping muscle, and it was truly wonderful to see how swiftly and to
all appearance heedlessly he flashed across nerve-trying chasms six or
eight feet wide. His courage was so unwavering that it seemed to be due
to dullness of perception, as if he were only blindly bold; and I kept
warning him to be careful. For we had been close companions on so many
wilderness trips that I had formed the habit of talking to him as if he
were a boy and understood every word.

We gained the west shore in about three hours; the width of the glacier
here being about seven miles. Then I pushed northward in order to see as
far back as possible into the fountains of the Fairweather Mountains, in
case the clouds should rise. The walking was easy along the margin of
the forest, which, of course, like that on the other side, had been
invaded and crushed by the swollen, overflowing glacier. In an hour or
so, after passing a massive headland, we came suddenly on a branch of
the glacier, which, in the form of a magnificent ice-cascade two miles
wide, was pouring over the rim of the main basin in a westerly
direction, its surface broken into wave-shaped blades and shattered