Video for artificers and material to repair the bottom, and for a
new crank-shaft for her engines, which had also recently come to
grief.
On the 9th of February we bade good-bye to the officers oi
the Maranhense, and steamed back to Port Gallant.
Some days subsequently we moved westward to Playa Parda
Cove in Crooked Reach, our boats having been meanwhile engaged
in charting the coastline.
On February 18th a small party of us made a trip in the steam
cutter from Playa Paraa Cove to visit a glacier which is situated
about six miles to the eastward. We steamed round to the inlet,
which is marked on the chart as Glacier Bay, and moored the
cutter under a lofty cliff near the head of the bay. The land
here was low and fiat, covered with a dense forest, and bounded
on either side by precipitous lofty cliffs, whose smooth faces
exhibited planings and scorings due to the abrading action of old
glaciers. I landed about the middle of the low muddy beach,
which extended from cliff to cliff, and proceeded to penetrate the
forest in the direction of the glacier. Here I at first found some
difficulty in advancing, for after tearing my way through a dense
prickly scrub of barberry bushes, I came upon an even more
serious obstacle, in the shape of a broad and rapid torrent of
mud-coloured water, which it was absolutely necessary to cross.
This was one of the streams which flowed from under the glacier.
Cautiously feeling my way, and steadying myseh against the
rushing water, I just managed to get across, finding the process
rather cold ; and now, after traversing a belt of forest, which was
only half a mile in width, but which gave me forty-five minutes
hard work, I emerged all at once from the gloomy shade of the
beech trees to find my eyes dazzled by a glare of white light, and
the foot of the glacier straight before me. The line of trees was
separated from the snout of the glacier by a freshly-accumulating
terminal moraine, of about one hundred yards in width ; and
where this moraine adjoined the sharply-defined edge of the forest,