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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11673 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Stickeen
+
+by John Muir
+
+1909
+
+
+
+
+TO
+HELEN MUIR
+
+Lover of wildness
+this icy storm-story
+is affectionately
+dedicated
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DOG BLANCO
+BY J.G. HOLLAND
+
+
+My dear dumb friend, low lying there,
+    A willing vassal at my feet;
+Glad partner of my home and fare,
+    My shadow in the street;
+
+I look into your great brown eyes,
+    Where love and loyal homage shine,
+And wonder where the difference lies
+    Between your soul and mine!
+
+ . . . . . . .
+
+I scan the whole broad earth around
+    For that one heart which, leal and true,
+Bears friendship without end or bound,
+    And find the prize in you.
+
+ . . . . . . .
+
+Ah, Blanco! did I worship God
+    As truly as you worship me,
+Or follow where my Master trod
+    With your humility:
+
+Did I sit fondly at His feet
+    As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,
+And watch Him with a love as sweet,
+    My life would grow divine!
+
+
+
+
+STICKEEN
+
+
+In the summer of 1880 I set out from Fort Wrangel in a canoe to
+continue the exploration of the icy region of southeastern Alaska,
+begun in the fall of 1879. After the necessary provisions, blankets,
+etc., had been collected and stowed away, and my Indian crew were in
+their places ready to start, while a crowd of their relatives and
+friends on the wharf were bidding them good-by and good-luck, my
+companion, the Rev. S.H. Young, for whom we were waiting, at last came
+aboard, followed by a little black dog, that immediately made himself
+at home by curling up in a hollow among the baggage. I like dogs, but
+this one seemed so small and worthless that I objected to his going,
+and asked the missionary why he was taking him.
+
+“Such a little helpless creature will only be in the way,” I said; “you
+had better pass him up to the Indian boys on the wharf, to be taken
+home to play with the children. This trip is not likely to be good for
+toy-dogs. The poor silly thing will be in rain and snow for weeks or
+months, and will require care like a baby.”
+
+But his master assured me that he would be no trouble at all; that he
+was a perfect wonder of a dog, could endure cold and hunger like a
+bear, swim like a seal, and was wondrous wise and cunning, etc., making
+out a list of virtues to show he might be the most interesting member
+of the party.
+
+Nobody could hope to unravel the lines of his ancestry. In all the
+wonderfully mixed and varied dog-tribe I never saw any creature very
+much like him, though in some of his sly, soft, gliding motions and
+gestures he brought the fox to mind. He was short-legged and
+bunchy-bodied, and his hair, though smooth, was long and silky and
+slightly waved, so that when the wind was at his back it ruffled,
+making him look shaggy. At first sight his only noticeable feature was
+his fine tail, which was about as airy and shady as a squirrel’s, and
+was carried curling forward almost to his nose. On closer inspection
+you might notice his thin sensitive ears, and sharp eyes with cunning
+tan-spots above them. Mr. Young told me that when the little fellow was
+a pup about the size of a woodrat he was presented to his wife by an
+Irish prospector at Sitka, and that on his arrival at Fort Wrangel he
+was adopted with enthusiasm by the Stickeen Indians as a sort of new
+good-luck totem, was named “Stickeen” for the tribe, and became a
+universal favorite; petted, protected, and admired wherever he went,
+and regarded as a mysterious fountain of wisdom.
+
+On our trip he soon proved himself a queer character—odd, concealed,
+independent, keeping invincibly quiet, and doing many little puzzling
+things that piqued my curiosity. As we sailed week after week through
+the long intricate channels and inlets among the innumerable islands
+and mountains of the coast, he spent most of the dull days in sluggish
+ease, motionless, and apparently as unobserving as if in deep sleep.
+But I discovered that somehow he always knew what was going on. When
+the Indians were about to shoot at ducks or seals, or when anything
+along the shore was exciting our attention, he would rest his chin on
+the edge of the canoe and calmly look out like a dreamy-eyed tourist.
+And when he heard us talking about making a landing, he immediately
+roused himself to see what sort of a place we were coming to, and made
+ready to jump overboard and swim ashore as soon as the canoe neared the
+beach. Then, with a vigorous shake to get rid of the brine in his hair,
+he ran into the woods to hunt small game. But though always the first
+out of the canoe, he was always the last to get into it. When we were
+ready to start he could never be found, and refused to come to our
+call. We soon found out, however, that though we could not see him at
+such times, he saw us, and from the cover of the briers and huckleberry
+bushes in the fringe of the woods was watching the canoe with wary eye.
+For as soon as we were fairly off he came trotting down the beach,
+plunged into the surf, and swam after us, knowing well that we would
+cease rowing and take him in. When the contrary little vagabond came
+alongside, he was lifted by the neck, held at arm’s length a moment to
+drip, and dropped aboard. We tried to cure him of this trick by
+compelling him to swim a long way, as if we had a mind to abandon him;
+but this did no good: the longer the swim the better he seemed to like
+it.
+
+Though capable of great idleness, he never failed to be ready for all
+sorts of adventures and excursions. One pitch-dark rainy night we
+landed about ten o’clock at the mouth of a salmon stream when the water
+was phosphorescent. The salmon were running, and the myriad fins of the
+onrushing multitude were churning all the stream into a silvery glow,
+wonderfully beautiful and impressive in the ebon darkness. To get a
+good view of the show I set out with one of the Indians and sailed up
+through the midst of it to the foot of a rapid about half a mile from
+camp, where the swift current dashing over rocks made the luminous glow
+most glorious. Happening to look back down the stream, while the Indian
+was catching a few of the struggling fish, I saw a long spreading fan
+of light like the tail of a comet, which we thought must be made by
+some big strange animal that was pursuing us. On it came with its
+magnificent train, until we imagined we could see the monster’s head
+and eyes; but it was only Stickeen, who, finding I had left the camp,
+came swimming after me to see what was up.
+
+When we camped early, the best hunter of the crew usually went to the
+woods for a deer, and Stickeen was sure to be at his heels, provided I
+had not gone out. For, strange to say, though I never carried a gun, he
+always followed me, forsaking the hunter and even his master to share
+my wanderings. The days that were too stormy for sailing I spent in the
+woods, or on the adjacent mountains, wherever my studies called me; and
+Stickeen always insisted on going with me, however wild the weather,
+gliding like a fox through dripping huckleberry bushes and thorny
+tangles of panax and rubus, scarce stirring their rain-laden leaves;
+wading and wallowing through snow, swimming icy streams, skipping over
+logs and rocks and the crevasses of glaciers with the patience and
+endurance of a determined mountaineer, never tiring or getting
+discouraged. Once he followed me over a glacier the surface of which
+was so crusty and rough that it cut his feet until every step was
+marked with blood; but he trotted on with Indian fortitude until I
+noticed his red track, and, taking pity on him, made him a set of
+moccasins out of a handkerchief. However great his troubles he never
+asked help or made any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he had
+learned that without hard work and suffering there could be no pleasure
+worth having.
+
+Yet none of us was able to make out what Stickeen was really good for.
+He seemed to meet danger and hardships without anything like reason,
+insisted on having his own way, never obeyed an order, and the hunter
+could never set him on anything, or make him fetch the birds he shot.
+His equanimity was so steady it seemed due to want of feeling; ordinary
+storms were pleasures to him, and as for mere rain, he flourished in it
+like a vegetable. No matter what advances you might make, scarce a
+glance or a tail-wag would you get for your pains. But though he was
+apparently as cold as a glacier and about as impervious to fun, I tried
+hard to make his acquaintance, guessing there must be something worth
+while hidden beneath so much courage, endurance, and love of
+wild-weathery adventure. No superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old
+in office surpassed this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes
+reminded me of a small, squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never
+displayed a single trace of the merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the
+terriers and collies that we all know, nor of their touching affection
+and devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be loved and
+allowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to be
+let alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor of
+his hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature. His strength
+of character lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills, and as
+young, and as wild. I never tired of looking into them: it was like
+looking into a landscape; but they were small and rather deep-set, and
+had no explaining lines around them to give out particulars. I was
+accustomed to look into the faces of plants and animals, and I watched
+the little sphinx more and more keenly as an interesting study. But
+there is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our
+lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for
+it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and
+made perfect.
+
+After exploring the Sumdum and Tahkoo fiords and their glaciers, we
+sailed through Stephen’s Passage into Lynn Canal and thence through Icy
+Strait into Cross Sound, searching for unexplored inlets leading toward
+the great fountain ice-fields of the Fairweather Range. Here, while the
+tide was in our favor, we were accompanied by a fleet of icebergs
+drifting out to the ocean from Glacier Bay. Slowly we paddled around
+Vancouver’s Point, Wimbledon, our frail canoe tossed like a feather on
+the massive heaving swells coming in past Cape Spenser. For miles the
+sound is bounded by precipitous mural cliffs, which, lashed with
+wave-spray and their heads hidden in clouds, looked terribly
+threatening and stern. Had our canoe been crushed or upset we could
+have made no landing here, for the cliffs, as high as those of
+Yosemite, sink sheer into deep water. Eagerly we scanned the wall on
+the north side for the first sign of an opening fiord or harbor, all of
+us anxious except Stickeen, who dozed in peace or gazed dreamily at the
+tremendous precipices when he heard us talking about them. At length we
+made the joyful discovery of the mouth of the inlet now called “Taylor
+Bay,” and about five o’clock reached the head of it and encamped in a
+spruce grove near the front of a large glacier.
+
+While camp was being made, Joe the hunter climbed the mountain wall on
+the east side of the fiord in pursuit of wild goats, while Mr. Young
+and I went to the glacier. We found that it is separated from the
+waters of the inlet by a tide-washed moraine, and extends, an abrupt
+barrier, all the way across from wall to wall of the inlet, a distance
+of about three miles. But our most interesting discovery was that it
+had recently advanced, though again slightly receding. A portion of the
+terminal moraine had been plowed up and shoved forward, uprooting and
+overwhelming the woods on the east side. Many of the trees were down
+and buried, or nearly so, others were leaning away from the ice-cliffs,
+ready to fall, and some stood erect, with the bottom of the ice plow
+still beneath their roots and its lofty crystal spires towering high
+above their tops. The spectacle presented by these century-old trees
+standing close beside a spiry wall of ice, with their branches almost
+touching it, was most novel and striking. And when I climbed around the
+front, and a little way up the west side of the glacier, I found that
+it had swelled and increased in height and width in accordance with its
+advance, and carried away the outer ranks of trees on its bank.
+
+On our way back to camp after these first observations I planned a
+far-and-wide excursion for the morrow. I awoke early, called not only
+by the glacier, which had been on my mind all night, but by a grand
+flood-storm. The wind was blowing a gale from the north and the rain
+was flying with the clouds in a wide passionate horizontal flood, as if
+it were all passing over the country instead of falling on it. The main
+perennial streams were booming high above their banks, and hundreds of
+new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty gray walls of
+the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a cup of
+coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when
+I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of
+Nature’s finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful
+to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with
+them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and
+chanting with the old Norsemen, “The blast of the tempest aids our
+oars, the hurricane is our servant and drives us whither we wish to
+go.” So, omitting breakfast, I put a piece of bread in my pocket and
+hurried away.
+
+Mr. Young and the Indians were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen;
+but I had not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in the tent and
+came boring through the blast after me. That a man should welcome
+storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God
+making landscapes, is reasonable enough; but what fascination could
+there be in such tremendous weather for a dog? Surely nothing akin to
+human enthusiasm for scenery or geology. Anyhow, on he came,
+breakfastless, through the choking blast. I stopped and did my best to
+turn him back. “Now don’t,” I said, shouting to make myself heard in
+the storm, “now don’t, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle
+now? You must be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. There is no
+game abroad, nothing but weather. Go back to camp and keep warm, get a
+good breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. I can’t
+carry you all day or feed you, and this storm will kill you.”
+
+But Nature, it seems, was at the bottom of the affair, and she gains
+her ends with dogs as well as with men, making us do as she likes,
+shoving and pulling us along her ways, however rough, all but killing
+us at times in getting her lessons driven hard home. After I had
+stopped again and again, shouting good warning advice, I saw that he
+was not to be shaken off; as well might the earth try to shake off the
+moon. I had once led his master into trouble, when he fell on one of
+the topmost jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm; now the turn of
+his humble companion was coming. The pitiful little wanderer just stood
+there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, “Where thou
+goest I will go.” So at last I told him to come on if he must, and gave
+him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket; then we struggled on
+together, and thus began the most memorable of all my wild days.
+
+The level flood, driving hard in our faces, thrashed and washed us
+wildly until we got into the shelter of a grove on the east side of the
+glacier near the front, where we stopped awhile for breath and to
+listen and look out. The exploration of the glacier was my main object,
+but the wind was too high to allow excursions over its open surface,
+where one might be dangerously shoved while balancing for a jump on the
+brink of a crevasse. In the mean time the storm was a fine study. Here
+the end of the glacier, descending an abrupt swell of resisting rock
+about five hundred feet high, leans forward and falls in ice cascades.
+And as the storm came down the glacier from the north, Stickeen and I
+were beneath the main current of the blast, while favorably located to
+see and hear it. What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the
+smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small
+voices of the storm! Detached wafts and swirls were coming through the
+woods, with music from the leaves and branches and furrowed boles, and
+even from the splintered rocks and ice-crags overhead, many of the
+tones soft and low and flute-like, as if each leaf and tree, crag and
+spire were a tuned reed. A broad torrent, draining the side of the
+glacier, now swollen by scores of new streams from the mountains, was
+rolling boulders along its rocky channel, with thudding, bumping,
+muffled sounds, rushing towards the bay with tremendous energy, as if
+in haste to get out of the mountains; the waters above and beneath
+calling to each other, and all to the ocean, their home.
+
+Looking southward from our shelter, we had this great torrent and the
+forested mountain wall above it on our left, the spiry ice-crags on our
+right, and smooth gray gloom ahead. I tried to draw the marvelous scene
+in my note-book, but the rain blurred the page in spite of all my pains
+to shelter it, and the sketch was almost worthless. When the wind began
+to abate, I traced the east side of the glacier. All the trees standing
+on the edge of the woods were barked and bruised, showing high-ice mark
+in a very telling way, while tens of thousands of those that had stood
+for centuries on the bank of the glacier farther out lay crushed and
+being crushed. In many places I could see down fifty feet or so beneath
+the margin of the glacier-mill, where trunks from one to two feet in
+diameter were being ground to pulp against outstanding rock-ribs and
+bosses of the bank.
+
+About three miles above the front of the glacier I climbed to the
+surface of it by means of axe-steps made easy for Stickeen. As far as
+the eye could reach, the level, or nearly level, glacier stretched away
+indefinitely beneath the gray sky, a seemingly boundless prairie of
+ice. The rain continued, and grew colder, which I did not mind, but a
+dim snowy look in the drooping clouds made me hesitate about venturing
+far from land. No trace of the west shore was visible, and in case the
+clouds should settle and give snow, or the wind again become violent, I
+feared getting caught in a tangle of crevasses. Snow-crystals, the
+flowers of the mountain clouds, are frail, beautiful things, but
+terrible when flying on storm-winds in darkening, benumbing swarms or
+when welded together into glaciers full of deadly crevasses. Watching
+the weather, I sauntered about on the crystal sea. For a mile or two
+out I found the ice remarkably safe. The marginal crevasses were mostly
+narrow, while the few wider ones were easily avoided by passing around
+them, and the clouds began to open here and there.
+
+Thus encouraged, I at last pushed out for the other side; for Nature
+can make us do anything she likes. At first we made rapid progress, and
+the sky was not very threatening, while I took bearings occasionally
+with a pocket compass to enable me to find my way back more surely in
+case the storm should become blinding; but the structure lines of the
+glacier were my main guide. Toward the west side we came to a closely
+crevassed section in which we had to make long, narrow tacks and
+doublings, tracing the edges of tremendous transverse and longitudinal
+crevasses, many of which were from twenty to thirty feet wide, and
+perhaps a thousand feet deep—beautiful and awful. In working a way
+through them I was severely cautious, but Stickeen came on as
+unhesitating as the flying clouds. The widest crevasse that I could
+jump he would leap without so much as halting to take a look at it. The
+weather was now making quick changes, scattering bits of dazzling
+brightness through the wintry gloom; at rare intervals, when the sun
+broke forth wholly free, 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 blocks, suggesting the wildest updashing, heaving, plunging
+motion of a great river cataract. Tracing it down three or four miles,
+I found that it discharged into a lake, filling it with icebergs.
+
+I would gladly have followed the lake outlet to tide-water, but the day
+was already far spent, and the threatening sky called for haste on the
+return trip to get off the ice before dark. I decided therefore to go
+no farther, and, after taking a general view of the wonderful region,
+turned back, hoping to see it again under more favorable auspices. We
+made good speed up the cañon of the great ice-torrent, and out on the
+main glacier until we had left the west shore about two miles behind
+us. Here we got into a difficult network of crevasses, the gathering
+clouds began to drop misty fringes, and soon the dreaded snow came
+flying thick and fast. I now began to feel anxious about finding a way
+in the blurring storm. Stickeen showed no trace of fear. He was still
+the same silent, able little hero. I noticed, however, that after the
+storm-darkness came on he kept close up behind me. The snow urged us to
+make still greater haste, but at the same time hid our way. I pushed on
+as best I could, jumping innumerable crevasses, and for every hundred
+rods or so of direct advance traveling a mile in doubling up and down
+in the turmoil of chasms and dislocated ice-blocks. After an hour or
+two of this work we came to a series of longitudinal crevasses of
+appalling width, and almost straight and regular in trend, like immense
+furrows. These I traced with firm nerve, excited and strengthened by
+the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on their dizzy edges
+after cutting hollows for my feet before making the spring, to avoid
+possible slipping or any uncertainty on the farther sides, where only
+one trial is granted—exercise at once frightful and inspiring. Stickeen
+followed seemingly without effort.
+
+Many a mile we thus traveled, mostly up and down, making but little
+real headway in crossing, running instead of walking most of the time
+as the danger of being compelled to spend the night on the glacier
+became threatening. Stickeen seemed able for anything. Doubtless we
+could have weathered the storm for one night, dancing on a flat spot to
+keep from freezing, and I faced the threat without feeling anything
+like despair; but we were hungry and wet, and the wind from the
+mountains was still thick with snow and bitterly cold, so of course
+that night would have seemed a very long one. I could not see far
+enough through the blurring snow to judge in which general direction
+the least dangerous route lay, while the few dim, momentary glimpses I
+caught of mountains through rifts in the flying clouds were far from
+encouraging either as weather signs or as guides. I had simply to grope
+my way from crevasse to crevasse, holding a general direction by the
+ice-structure, which was not to be seen everywhere, and partly by the
+wind. Again and again I was put to my mettle, but Stickeen followed
+easily, his nerve apparently growing more unflinching as the danger
+increased. So it always is with mountaineers when hard beset. Running
+hard and jumping, holding every minute of the remaining daylight, poor
+as it was, precious, we doggedly persevered and tried to hope that
+every difficult crevasse we overcame would prove to be the last of its
+kind. But on the contrary, as we advanced they became more deadly
+trying.
+
+At length our way was barred by a very wide and straight crevasse,
+which I traced rapidly northward a mile or so without finding a
+crossing or hope of one; then down the glacier about as far, to where
+it united with another uncrossable crevasse. In all this distance of
+perhaps two miles there was only one place where I could possibly jump
+it, but the width of this jump was the utmost I dared attempt, while
+the danger of slipping on the farther side was so great that I was
+loath to try it. Furthermore, the side I was on was about a foot higher
+than the other, and even with this advantage the crevasse seemed
+dangerously wide. One is liable to underestimate the width of crevasses
+where the magnitudes in general are great, I therefore stared at this
+one mighty keenly, estimating its width and the shape of the edge on
+the farther side, until I thought that I could jump it if necessary,
+but that in case I should be compelled to jump back from the lower side
+I might fail. Now, a cautious mountaineer seldom takes a step on
+unknown ground which seems at all dangerous that he cannot retrace in
+case he should be stopped by unseen obstacles ahead. This is the rule
+of mountaineers who live long, and, though in haste, I compelled myself
+to sit down and calmly deliberate before I broke it.
+
+Retracing my devious path in imagination as if it were drawn on a
+chart, I saw that I was recrossing the glacier a mile or two farther up
+stream than the course pursued in the morning, and that I was now
+entangled in a section I had not before seen. Should I risk this
+dangerous jump, or try to regain the woods on the west shore, make a
+fire, and have only hunger to endure while waiting for a new day? I had
+already crossed so broad a stretch of dangerous ice that I saw it would
+be difficult to get back to the woods through the storm, before dark,
+and the attempt would most likely result in a dismal night-dance on the
+glacier; while just beyond the present barrier the surface seemed more
+promising, and the east shore was now perhaps about as near as the
+west. I was therefore eager to go on. But this wide jump was a dreadful
+obstacle.
+
+At length, because of the dangers already behind me, I determined to
+venture against those that might be ahead, jumped and landed well, but
+with so little to spare that I more than ever dreaded being compelled
+to take that jump back from the lower side. Stickeen followed, making
+nothing of it, and we ran eagerly forward, hoping we were leaving all
+our troubles behind. But within the distance of a few hundred yards we
+were stopped by the widest crevasse yet encountered. Of course I made
+haste to explore it, hoping all might yet be remedied by finding a
+bridge or a way around either end. About three-fourths of a mile
+upstream I found that it united with the one we had just crossed, as I
+feared it would. Then, tracing it down, I found it joined the same
+crevasse at the lower end also, maintaining throughout its whole course
+a width of forty to fifty feet. Thus to my dismay I discovered that we
+were on a narrow island about two miles long, with two barely possible
+ways of escape: one back by the way we came, the other ahead by an
+almost inaccessible sliver-bridge that crossed the great crevasse from
+near the middle of it!
+
+After this nerve-trying discovery I ran back to the sliver-bridge and
+cautiously examined it. Crevasses, caused by strains from variations in
+the rate of motion of different parts of the glacier and convexities in
+the channel, are mere cracks when they first open, so narrow as hardly
+to admit the blade of a pocket-knife, and gradually widen according to
+the extent of the strain and the depth of the glacier. Now some of
+these cracks are interrupted, like the cracks in wood, and in opening,
+the strip of ice between overlapping ends is dragged out, and may
+maintain a continuous connection between the sides, just as the two
+sides of a slivered crack in wood that is being split are connected.
+Some crevasses remain open for months or even years, and by the melting
+of their sides continue to increase in width long after the opening
+strain has ceased; while the sliver-bridges, level on top at first and
+perfectly safe, are at length melted to thin, vertical, knife-edged
+blades, the upper portion being most exposed to the weather; and since
+the exposure is greatest in the middle, they at length curve downward
+like the cables of suspension bridges. This one was evidently very old,
+for it had been weathered and wasted until it was the most dangerous
+and inaccessible that ever lay in my way. The width of the crevasse was
+here about fifty feet, and the sliver crossing diagonally was about
+seventy feet long; its thin knife-edge near the middle was depressed
+twenty-five or thirty feet below the level of the glacier, and the
+upcurving ends were attached to the sides eight or ten feet below the
+brink. Getting down the nearly vertical wall to the end of the sliver
+and up the other side were the main difficulties, and they seemed all
+but insurmountable. Of the many perils encountered in my years of
+wandering on mountains and glaciers none seemed so plain and stern and
+merciless as this. And it was presented when we were wet to the skin
+and hungry, the sky dark with quick driving snow, and the night near.
+But we were forced to face it. It was a tremendous necessity.
+
+Beginning, not immediately above the sunken end of the bridge, but a
+little to one side, I cut a deep hollow on the brink for my knees to
+rest in. Then, leaning over, with my short-handled axe I cut a step
+sixteen or eighteen inches below, which on account of the sheerness of
+the wall was necessarily shallow. That step, however, was well made;
+its floor sloped slightly inward and formed a good hold for my heels.
+Then, slipping cautiously upon it, and crouching as low as possible,
+with my left side toward the wall, I steadied myself against the wind
+with my left hand in a slight notch, while with the right I cut other
+similar steps and notches in succession, guarding against losing
+balance by glinting of the axe, or by wind-gusts, for life and death
+were in every stroke and in the niceness of finish of every foothold.
+
+After the end of the bridge was reached I chipped it down until I had
+made a level platform six or eight inches wide, and it was a trying
+thing to poise on this little slippery platform while bending over to
+get safely astride of the sliver. Crossing was then comparatively easy
+by chipping off the sharp edge with short, careful strokes, and
+hitching forward an inch or two at a time, keeping my balance with my
+knees pressed against the sides. The tremendous abyss on either hand I
+studiously ignored. To me the edge of that blue sliver was then all the
+world. But the most trying part of the adventure, after working my way
+across inch by inch and chipping another small platform, was to rise
+from the safe position astride and to cut a step-ladder in the nearly
+vertical face of the wall,—chipping, climbing, holding on with feet and
+fingers in mere notches. At such times one’s whole body is eye, and
+common skill and fortitude are replaced by power beyond our call or
+knowledge. Never before had I been so long under deadly strain. How I
+got up that cliff I never could tell. The thing seemed to have been
+done by somebody else. I never have held death in contempt, though in
+the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one’s
+fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be
+blessed as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby
+lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so
+glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel
+gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen
+lives.
+
+But poor Stickeen, the wee, hairy, sleekit beastie, think of him! When
+I had decided to dare the bridge, and while I was on my knees chipping
+a hollow on the rounded brow above it, he came behind me, pushed his
+head past my shoulder, looked down and across, scanned the sliver and
+its approaches with his mysterious eyes, then looked me in the face
+with a startled air of surprise and concern, and began to mutter and
+whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with words, “Surely, you are
+not going into that awful place.” This was the first time I had seen
+him gaze deliberately into a crevasse, or into my face with an eager,
+speaking, troubled look. That he should have recognized and appreciated
+the danger at the first glance showed wonderful sagacity. Never before
+had the daring midget seemed to know that ice was slippery or that
+there was any such thing as danger anywhere. His looks and tones of
+voice when he began to complain and speak his fears were so human that
+I unconsciously talked to him in sympathy as I would to a frightened
+boy, and in trying to calm his fears perhaps in some measure moderated
+my own. “Hush your fears, my boy,” I said, “we will get across safe,
+though it is not going to be easy. No right way is easy in this rough
+world. We must risk our lives to save them. At the worst we can only
+slip, and then how grand a grave we will have, and by and by our nice
+bones will do good in the terminal moraine.”
+
+But my sermon was far from reassuring him: he began to cry, and after
+taking another piercing look at the tremendous gulf, ran away in
+desperate excitement, seeking some other crossing. By the time he got
+back, baffled of course, I had made a step or two. I dared not look
+back, but he made himself heard; and when he saw that I was certainly
+bent on crossing he cried aloud in despair. The danger was enough to
+daunt anybody, but it seems wonderful that he should have been able to
+weigh and appreciate it so justly. No mountaineer could have seen it
+more quickly or judged it more wisely, discriminating between real and
+apparent peril.
+
+When I gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever, and after
+running back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would
+return to the brink of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and
+wailing as if in the bitterness of death. Could this be the silent,
+philosophic Stickeen? I shouted encouragement, telling him the bridge
+was not so bad as it looked, that I had left it flat and safe for his
+feet, and he could walk it easily. But he was afraid to try. Strange so
+small an animal should be capable of such big, wise fears. I called
+again and again in a reassuring tone to come on and fear nothing; that
+he could come if he would only try. He would hush for a moment, look
+down again at the bridge, and shout his unshakable conviction that he
+could never, never come that way; then lie back in despair, as if
+howling, “O-o-oh! what a place! No-o-o, I can never go-o-o down there!”
+His natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous
+storm of fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed
+ridiculous. But in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of
+death, and his heartrending cries might well have called Heaven to his
+help. Perhaps they did. So hidden before, he was now transparent, and
+one could see the workings of his heart and mind like the movements of
+a clock out of its case. His voice and gestures, hopes and fears, were
+so perfectly human that none could mistake them; while he seemed to
+understand every word of mine. I was troubled at the thought of having
+to leave him out all night, and of the danger of not finding him in the
+morning. It seemed impossible to get him to venture. To compel him to
+try through fear of being abandoned, I started off as if leaving him to
+his fate, and disappeared back of a hummock; but this did no good; he
+only lay down and moaned in utter hopeless misery. So, after hiding a
+few minutes, I went back to the brink of the crevasse and in a severe
+tone of voice shouted across to him that now I must certainly leave
+him, I could wait no longer, and that, if he would not come, all I
+could promise was that I would return to seek him next day. I warned
+him that if he went back to the woods the wolves would kill him, and
+finished by urging him once more by words and gestures to come on, come
+on.
+
+He knew very well what I meant, and at last, with the courage of
+despair, hushed and breathless, he crouched down on the brink in the
+hollow I had made for my knees, pressed his body against the ice as if
+trying to get the advantage of the friction of every hair, gazed into
+the first step, put his little feet together and slid them slowly,
+slowly over the edge and down into it, bunching all four in it and
+almost standing on his head. Then, without lifting his feet, as well as
+I could see through the snow, he slowly worked them over the edge of
+the step and down into the next and the next in succession in the same
+way, and gained the end of the bridge. Then, lifting his feet with the
+regularity and slowness of the vibrations of a seconds pendulum, as if
+counting and measuring one-two-three, holding himself steady against
+the gusty wind, and giving separate attention to each little step, he
+gained the foot of the cliff, while I was on my knees leaning over to
+give him a lift should he succeed in getting within reach of my arm.
+Here he halted in dead silence, and it was here I feared he might fail,
+for dogs are poor climbers. I had no cord. If I had had one, I would
+have dropped a noose over his head and hauled him up. But while I was
+thinking whether an available cord might be made out of clothing, he
+was looking keenly into the series of notched steps and finger-holds I
+had made, as if counting them, and fixing the position of each one of
+them in his mind. Then suddenly up he came in a springy rush, hooking
+his paws into the steps and notches so quickly that I could not see how
+it was done, and whizzed past my head, safe at last!
+
+And now came a scene! “Well done, well done, little boy! Brave boy!” I
+cried, trying to catch and caress him; but he would not be caught.
+Never before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a
+revulsion from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant,
+uncontrollable joy. He flashed and darted hither and thither as if
+fairly demented, screaming and shouting, swirling round and round in
+giddy loops and circles like a leaf in a whirlwind, lying down, and
+rolling over and over, sidewise and heels over head, and pouring forth
+a tumultuous flood of hysterical cries and sobs and gasping mutterings.
+When I ran up to him to shake him, fearing he might die of joy, he
+flashed off two or three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion;
+then, turning suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself
+at my face, almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and
+screaming and shouting as if saying, “Saved! saved! saved!” Then away
+again, dropping suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling
+and fairly sobbing. Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him.
+Moses’ stately song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red
+Sea was nothing to it. Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull,
+enduring little fellow for all that most stirs this mortal frame?
+Nobody could have helped crying with him!
+
+But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy.
+So I ran ahead, calling him in as gruff a voice as I could command to
+come on and stop his nonsense, for we had far to go and it would soon
+be dark. Neither of us feared another trial like this. Heaven would
+surely count one enough for a lifetime. The ice ahead was gashed by
+thousands of crevasses, but they were common ones. The joy of
+deliverance burned in us like fire, and we ran without fatigue, every
+muscle with immense rebound glorying in its strength. Stickeen flew
+across everything in his way, and not till dark did he settle into his
+normal fox-like trot. At last the cloudy mountains came in sight, and
+we soon felt the solid rock beneath our feet, and were safe. Then came
+weakness. Danger had vanished, and so had our strength. We tottered
+down the lateral moraine in the dark, over boulders and tree trunks,
+through the bushes and devil-club thickets of the grove where we had
+sheltered ourselves in the morning, and across the level mud-slope of
+the terminal moraine. We reached camp about ten o’clock, and found a
+big fire and a big supper. A party of Hoona Indians had visited Mr.
+Young, bringing a gift of porpoise meat and wild strawberries, and
+Hunter Joe had brought in a wild goat. But we lay down, too tired to
+eat much, and soon fell into a troubled sleep. The man who said, “The
+harder the toil, the sweeter the rest,” never was profoundly tired.
+Stickeen kept springing up and muttering in his sleep, no doubt
+dreaming that he was still on the brink of the crevasse; and so did I,
+that night and many others long afterward, when I was overtired.
+
+Thereafter Stickeen was a changed dog. During the rest of the trip,
+instead of holding aloof, he always lay by my side, tried to keep me
+constantly in sight, and would hardly accept a morsel of food, however
+tempting, from any hand but mine. At night, when all was quiet about
+the camp-fire, he would come to me and rest his head on my knee with a
+look of devotion as if I were his god. And often as he caught my eye he
+seemed to be trying to say, “Wasn’t that an awful time we had together
+on the glacier?”
+
+Nothing in after years has dimmed that Alaska storm-day. As I write it
+all comes rushing and roaring to mind as if I were again in the heart
+of it. Again I see the gray flying clouds with their rain-floods and
+snow, the ice-cliffs towering above the shrinking forest, the majestic
+ice-cascade, the vast glacier outspread before its white mountain
+fountains, and in the heart of it the tremendous crevasse,—emblem of
+the valley of the shadow of death,—low clouds trailing over it, the
+snow falling into it; and on its brink I see little Stickeen, and I
+hear his cries for help and his shouts of joy. I have known many dogs,
+and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none
+do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least
+known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all.
+Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as
+through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy
+into all my fellow mortals.
+
+None of Stickeen’s friends knows what finally became of him. After my
+work for the season was done I departed for California, and I never saw
+the dear little fellow again. In reply to anxious inquiries his master
+wrote me that in the summer of 1883 he was stolen by a tourist at Fort
+Wrangel and taken away on a steamer. His fate is wrapped in mystery.
+Doubtless he has left this world—crossed the last crevasse—and gone to
+another. But he will not be forgotten. To me Stickeen is immortal.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11673 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11673 ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>Stickeen</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by John Muir</h2>
+
+<h4>1909</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center">
+TO<br />
+<big>HELEN MUIR</big><br />
+<br />
+Lover of wildness<br />
+this icy storm-story<br />
+is affectionately<br />
+dedicated
+</p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="center">
+TO MY DOG BLANCO<br/>
+BY J.G. HOLLAND
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+My dear dumb friend, low lying there,<br/>
+    A willing vassal at my feet;<br/>
+Glad partner of my home and fare,<br/>
+    My shadow in the street;<br/><br/>
+I look into your great brown eyes,<br/>
+    Where love and loyal homage shine,<br/>
+And wonder where the difference lies<br/>
+    Between your soul and mine!
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+ . . . . . . . <br/><br/>
+I scan the whole broad earth around<br/>
+    For that one heart which, leal and true,<br/>
+Bears friendship without end or bound,<br/>
+    And find the prize in you.
+</p>
+<p class="letter">
+ . . . . . . . <br/><br/>
+Ah, Blanco! did I worship God<br/>
+    As truly as you worship me,<br/>
+Or follow where my Master trod<br/>
+    With your humility:<br/><br/>
+Did I sit fondly at His feet<br/>
+    As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,<br/>
+And watch Him with a love as sweet,<br/>
+    My life would grow divine!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>STICKEEN</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the summer of 1880 I set out from Fort Wrangel in a canoe to continue the
+exploration of the icy region of southeastern Alaska, begun in the fall of
+1879. After the necessary provisions, blankets, etc., had been collected and
+stowed away, and my Indian crew were in their places ready to start, while a
+crowd of their relatives and friends on the wharf were bidding them good-by and
+good-luck, my companion, the Rev. S.H. Young, for whom we were waiting, at last
+came aboard, followed by a little black dog, that immediately made himself at
+home by curling up in a hollow among the baggage. I like dogs, but this one
+seemed so small and worthless that I objected to his going, and asked the
+missionary why he was taking him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Such a little helpless creature will only be in the way,&rdquo; I said;
+&ldquo;you had better pass him up to the Indian boys on the wharf, to be taken
+home to play with the children. This trip is not likely to be good for
+toy-dogs. The poor silly thing will be in rain and snow for weeks or months,
+and will require care like a baby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his master assured me that he would be no trouble at all; that he was a
+perfect wonder of a dog, could endure cold and hunger like a bear, swim like a
+seal, and was wondrous wise and cunning, etc., making out a list of virtues to
+show he might be the most interesting member of the party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody could hope to unravel the lines of his ancestry. In all the wonderfully
+mixed and varied dog-tribe I never saw any creature very much like him, though
+in some of his sly, soft, gliding motions and gestures he brought the fox to
+mind. He was short-legged and bunchy-bodied, and his hair, though smooth, was
+long and silky and slightly waved, so that when the wind was at his back it
+ruffled, making him look shaggy. At first sight his only noticeable feature was
+his fine tail, which was about as airy and shady as a squirrel&rsquo;s, and was
+carried curling forward almost to his nose. On closer inspection you might
+notice his thin sensitive ears, and sharp eyes with cunning tan-spots above
+them. Mr. Young told me that when the little fellow was a pup about the size of
+a woodrat he was presented to his wife by an Irish prospector at Sitka, and
+that on his arrival at Fort Wrangel he was adopted with enthusiasm by the
+Stickeen Indians as a sort of new good-luck totem, was named
+&ldquo;Stickeen&rdquo; for the tribe, and became a universal favorite; petted,
+protected, and admired wherever he went, and regarded as a mysterious fountain
+of wisdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On our trip he soon proved himself a queer character&mdash;odd, concealed,
+independent, keeping invincibly quiet, and doing many little puzzling things
+that piqued my curiosity. As we sailed week after week through the long
+intricate channels and inlets among the innumerable islands and mountains of
+the coast, he spent most of the dull days in sluggish ease, motionless, and
+apparently as unobserving as if in deep sleep. But I discovered that somehow he
+always knew what was going on. When the Indians were about to shoot at ducks or
+seals, or when anything along the shore was exciting our attention, he would
+rest his chin on the edge of the canoe and calmly look out like a dreamy-eyed
+tourist. And when he heard us talking about making a landing, he immediately
+roused himself to see what sort of a place we were coming to, and made ready to
+jump overboard and swim ashore as soon as the canoe neared the beach. Then,
+with a vigorous shake to get rid of the brine in his hair, he ran into the
+woods to hunt small game. But though always the first out of the canoe, he was
+always the last to get into it. When we were ready to start he could never be
+found, and refused to come to our call. We soon found out, however, that though
+we could not see him at such times, he saw us, and from the cover of the briers
+and huckleberry bushes in the fringe of the woods was watching the canoe with
+wary eye. For as soon as we were fairly off he came trotting down the beach,
+plunged into the surf, and swam after us, knowing well that we would cease
+rowing and take him in. When the contrary little vagabond came alongside, he
+was lifted by the neck, held at arm&rsquo;s length a moment to drip, and
+dropped aboard. We tried to cure him of this trick by compelling him to swim a
+long way, as if we had a mind to abandon him; but this did no good: the longer
+the swim the better he seemed to like it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though capable of great idleness, he never failed to be ready for all sorts of
+adventures and excursions. One pitch-dark rainy night we landed about ten
+o&rsquo;clock at the mouth of a salmon stream when the water was
+phosphorescent. The salmon were running, and the myriad fins of the onrushing
+multitude were churning all the stream into a silvery glow, wonderfully
+beautiful and impressive in the ebon darkness. To get a good view of the show I
+set out with one of the Indians and sailed up through the midst of it to the
+foot of a rapid about half a mile from camp, where the swift current dashing
+over rocks made the luminous glow most glorious. Happening to look back down
+the stream, while the Indian was catching a few of the struggling fish, I saw a
+long spreading fan of light like the tail of a comet, which we thought must be
+made by some big strange animal that was pursuing us. On it came with its
+magnificent train, until we imagined we could see the monster&rsquo;s head and
+eyes; but it was only Stickeen, who, finding I had left the camp, came swimming
+after me to see what was up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we camped early, the best hunter of the crew usually went to the woods for
+a deer, and Stickeen was sure to be at his heels, provided I had not gone out.
+For, strange to say, though I never carried a gun, he always followed me,
+forsaking the hunter and even his master to share my wanderings. The days that
+were too stormy for sailing I spent in the woods, or on the adjacent mountains,
+wherever my studies called me; and Stickeen always insisted on going with me,
+however wild the weather, gliding like a fox through dripping huckleberry
+bushes and thorny tangles of panax and rubus, scarce stirring their rain-laden
+leaves; wading and wallowing through snow, swimming icy streams, skipping over
+logs and rocks and the crevasses of glaciers with the patience and endurance of
+a determined mountaineer, never tiring or getting discouraged. Once he followed
+me over a glacier the surface of which was so crusty and rough that it cut his
+feet until every step was marked with blood; but he trotted on with Indian
+fortitude until I noticed his red track, and, taking pity on him, made him a
+set of moccasins out of a handkerchief. However great his troubles he never
+asked help or made any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he had learned
+that without hard work and suffering there could be no pleasure worth having.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet none of us was able to make out what Stickeen was really good for. He
+seemed to meet danger and hardships without anything like reason, insisted on
+having his own way, never obeyed an order, and the hunter could never set him
+on anything, or make him fetch the birds he shot. His equanimity was so steady
+it seemed due to want of feeling; ordinary storms were pleasures to him, and as
+for mere rain, he flourished in it like a vegetable. No matter what advances
+you might make, scarce a glance or a tail-wag would you get for your pains. But
+though he was apparently as cold as a glacier and about as impervious to fun, I
+tried hard to make his acquaintance, guessing there must be something worth
+while hidden beneath so much courage, endurance, and love of wild-weathery
+adventure. No superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old in office surpassed
+this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes reminded me of a small,
+squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never displayed a single trace of the
+merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the terriers and collies that we all know, nor of
+their touching affection and devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be
+loved and allowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to
+be let alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor of his
+hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature. His strength of character
+lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills, and as young, and as wild. I
+never tired of looking into them: it was like looking into a landscape; but
+they were small and rather deep-set, and had no explaining lines around them to
+give out particulars. I was accustomed to look into the faces of plants and
+animals, and I watched the little sphinx more and more keenly as an interesting
+study. But there is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in
+our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is
+through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After exploring the Sumdum and Tahkoo fiords and their glaciers, we sailed
+through Stephen&rsquo;s Passage into Lynn Canal and thence through Icy Strait
+into Cross Sound, searching for unexplored inlets leading toward the great
+fountain ice-fields of the Fairweather Range. Here, while the tide was in our
+favor, we were accompanied by a fleet of icebergs drifting out to the ocean
+from Glacier Bay. Slowly we paddled around Vancouver&rsquo;s Point, Wimbledon,
+our frail canoe tossed like a feather on the massive heaving swells coming in
+past Cape Spenser. For miles the sound is bounded by precipitous mural cliffs,
+which, lashed with wave-spray and their heads hidden in clouds, looked terribly
+threatening and stern. Had our canoe been crushed or upset we could have made
+no landing here, for the cliffs, as high as those of Yosemite, sink sheer into
+deep water. Eagerly we scanned the wall on the north side for the first sign of
+an opening fiord or harbor, all of us anxious except Stickeen, who dozed in
+peace or gazed dreamily at the tremendous precipices when he heard us talking
+about them. At length we made the joyful discovery of the mouth of the inlet
+now called &ldquo;Taylor Bay,&rdquo; and about five o&rsquo;clock reached the
+head of it and encamped in a spruce grove near the front of a large glacier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While camp was being made, Joe the hunter climbed the mountain wall on the east
+side of the fiord in pursuit of wild goats, while Mr. Young and I went to the
+glacier. We found that it is separated from the waters of the inlet by a
+tide-washed moraine, and extends, an abrupt barrier, all the way across from
+wall to wall of the inlet, a distance of about three miles. But our most
+interesting discovery was that it had recently advanced, though again slightly
+receding. A portion of the terminal moraine had been plowed up and shoved
+forward, uprooting and overwhelming the woods on the east side. Many of the
+trees were down and buried, or nearly so, others were leaning away from the
+ice-cliffs, ready to fall, and some stood erect, with the bottom of the ice
+plow still beneath their roots and its lofty crystal spires towering high above
+their tops. The spectacle presented by these century-old trees standing close
+beside a spiry wall of ice, with their branches almost touching it, was most
+novel and striking. And when I climbed around the front, and a little way up
+the west side of the glacier, I found that it had swelled and increased in
+height and width in accordance with its advance, and carried away the outer
+ranks of trees on its bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On our way back to camp after these first observations I planned a far-and-wide
+excursion for the morrow. I awoke early, called not only by the glacier, which
+had been on my mind all night, but by a grand flood-storm. The wind was blowing
+a gale from the north and the rain was flying with the clouds in a wide
+passionate horizontal flood, as if it were all passing over the country instead
+of falling on it. The main perennial streams were booming high above their
+banks, and hundreds of new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty
+gray walls of the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a
+cup of coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when
+I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of
+Nature&rsquo;s finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful to
+keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing
+in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and chanting with the old
+Norsemen, &ldquo;The blast of the tempest aids our oars, the hurricane is our
+servant and drives us whither we wish to go.&rdquo; So, omitting breakfast, I
+put a piece of bread in my pocket and hurried away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Young and the Indians were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen; but I had
+not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in the tent and came boring
+through the blast after me. That a man should welcome storms for their
+exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God making landscapes, is
+reasonable enough; but what fascination could there be in such tremendous
+weather for a dog? Surely nothing akin to human enthusiasm for scenery or
+geology. Anyhow, on he came, breakfastless, through the choking blast. I
+stopped and did my best to turn him back. &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; I
+said, shouting to make myself heard in the storm, &ldquo;now don&rsquo;t,
+Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle now? You must be daft. This wild
+day has nothing for you. There is no game abroad, nothing but weather. Go back
+to camp and keep warm, get a good breakfast with your master, and be sensible
+for once. I can&rsquo;t carry you all day or feed you, and this storm will kill
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Nature, it seems, was at the bottom of the affair, and she gains her ends
+with dogs as well as with men, making us do as she likes, shoving and pulling
+us along her ways, however rough, all but killing us at times in getting her
+lessons driven hard home. After I had stopped again and again, shouting good
+warning advice, I saw that he was not to be shaken off; as well might the earth
+try to shake off the moon. I had once led his master into trouble, when he fell
+on one of the topmost jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm; now the turn
+of his humble companion was coming. The pitiful little wanderer just stood
+there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, &ldquo;Where thou
+goest I will go.&rdquo; So at last I told him to come on if he must, and gave
+him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket; then we struggled on together, and
+thus began the most memorable of all my wild days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The level flood, driving hard in our faces, thrashed and washed us wildly until
+we got into the shelter of a grove on the east side of the glacier near the
+front, where we stopped awhile for breath and to listen and look out. The
+exploration of the glacier was my main object, but the wind was too high to
+allow excursions over its open surface, where one might be dangerously shoved
+while balancing for a jump on the brink of a crevasse. In the mean time the
+storm was a fine study. Here the end of the glacier, descending an abrupt swell
+of resisting rock about five hundred feet high, leans forward and falls in ice
+cascades. And as the storm came down the glacier from the north, Stickeen and I
+were beneath the main current of the blast, while favorably located to see and
+hear it. What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the
+washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!
+Detached wafts and swirls were coming through the woods, with music from the
+leaves and branches and furrowed boles, and even from the splintered rocks and
+ice-crags overhead, many of the tones soft and low and flute-like, as if each
+leaf and tree, crag and spire were a tuned reed. A broad torrent, draining the
+side of the glacier, now swollen by scores of new streams from the mountains,
+was rolling boulders along its rocky channel, with thudding, bumping, muffled
+sounds, rushing towards the bay with tremendous energy, as if in haste to get
+out of the mountains; the waters above and beneath calling to each other, and
+all to the ocean, their home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking southward from our shelter, we had this great torrent and the forested
+mountain wall above it on our left, the spiry ice-crags on our right, and
+smooth gray gloom ahead. I tried to draw the marvelous scene in my note-book,
+but the rain blurred the page in spite of all my pains to shelter it, and the
+sketch was almost worthless. When the wind began to abate, I traced the east
+side of the glacier. All the trees standing on the edge of the woods were
+barked and bruised, showing high-ice mark in a very telling way, while tens of
+thousands of those that had stood for centuries on the bank of the glacier
+farther out lay crushed and being crushed. In many places I could see down
+fifty feet or so beneath the margin of the glacier-mill, where trunks from one
+to two feet in diameter were being ground to pulp against outstanding rock-ribs
+and bosses of the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About three miles above the front of the glacier I climbed to the surface of it
+by means of axe-steps made easy for Stickeen. As far as the eye could reach,
+the level, or nearly level, glacier stretched away indefinitely beneath the
+gray sky, a seemingly boundless prairie of ice. The rain continued, and grew
+colder, which I did not mind, but a dim snowy look in the drooping clouds made
+me hesitate about venturing far from land. No trace of the west shore was
+visible, and in case the clouds should settle and give snow, or the wind again
+become violent, I feared getting caught in a tangle of crevasses.
+Snow-crystals, the flowers of the mountain clouds, are frail, beautiful things,
+but terrible when flying on storm-winds in darkening, benumbing swarms or when
+welded together into glaciers full of deadly crevasses. Watching the weather, I
+sauntered about on the crystal sea. For a mile or two out I found the ice
+remarkably safe. The marginal crevasses were mostly narrow, while the few wider
+ones were easily avoided by passing around them, and the clouds began to open
+here and there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus encouraged, I at last pushed out for the other side; for Nature can make
+us do anything she likes. At first we made rapid progress, and the sky was not
+very threatening, while I took bearings occasionally with a pocket compass to
+enable me to find my way back more surely in case the storm should become
+blinding; but the structure lines of the glacier were my main guide. Toward the
+west side we came to a closely crevassed section in which we had to make long,
+narrow tacks and doublings, tracing the edges of tremendous transverse and
+longitudinal crevasses, many of which were from twenty to thirty feet wide, and
+perhaps a thousand feet deep&mdash;beautiful and awful. In working a way
+through them I was severely cautious, but Stickeen came on as unhesitating as
+the flying clouds. The widest crevasse that I could jump he would leap without
+so much as halting to take a look at it. The weather was now making quick
+changes, scattering bits of dazzling brightness through the wintry gloom; at
+rare intervals, when the sun broke forth wholly free, 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 blocks, suggesting the wildest updashing, heaving, plunging motion of
+a great river cataract. Tracing it down three or four miles, I found that it
+discharged into a lake, filling it with icebergs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would gladly have followed the lake outlet to tide-water, but the day was
+already far spent, and the threatening sky called for haste on the return trip
+to get off the ice before dark. I decided therefore to go no farther, and,
+after taking a general view of the wonderful region, turned back, hoping to see
+it again under more favorable auspices. We made good speed up the ca&ntilde;on
+of the great ice-torrent, and out on the main glacier until we had left the
+west shore about two miles behind us. Here we got into a difficult network of
+crevasses, the gathering clouds began to drop misty fringes, and soon the
+dreaded snow came flying thick and fast. I now began to feel anxious about
+finding a way in the blurring storm. Stickeen showed no trace of fear. He was
+still the same silent, able little hero. I noticed, however, that after the
+storm-darkness came on he kept close up behind me. The snow urged us to make
+still greater haste, but at the same time hid our way. I pushed on as best I
+could, jumping innumerable crevasses, and for every hundred rods or so of
+direct advance traveling a mile in doubling up and down in the turmoil of
+chasms and dislocated ice-blocks. After an hour or two of this work we came to
+a series of longitudinal crevasses of appalling width, and almost straight and
+regular in trend, like immense furrows. These I traced with firm nerve, excited
+and strengthened by the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on their
+dizzy edges after cutting hollows for my feet before making the spring, to
+avoid possible slipping or any uncertainty on the farther sides, where only one
+trial is granted&mdash;exercise at once frightful and inspiring. Stickeen
+followed seemingly without effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many a mile we thus traveled, mostly up and down, making but little real
+headway in crossing, running instead of walking most of the time as the danger
+of being compelled to spend the night on the glacier became threatening.
+Stickeen seemed able for anything. Doubtless we could have weathered the storm
+for one night, dancing on a flat spot to keep from freezing, and I faced the
+threat without feeling anything like despair; but we were hungry and wet, and
+the wind from the mountains was still thick with snow and bitterly cold, so of
+course that night would have seemed a very long one. I could not see far enough
+through the blurring snow to judge in which general direction the least
+dangerous route lay, while the few dim, momentary glimpses I caught of
+mountains through rifts in the flying clouds were far from encouraging either
+as weather signs or as guides. I had simply to grope my way from crevasse to
+crevasse, holding a general direction by the ice-structure, which was not to be
+seen everywhere, and partly by the wind. Again and again I was put to my
+mettle, but Stickeen followed easily, his nerve apparently growing more
+unflinching as the danger increased. So it always is with mountaineers when
+hard beset. Running hard and jumping, holding every minute of the remaining
+daylight, poor as it was, precious, we doggedly persevered and tried to hope
+that every difficult crevasse we overcame would prove to be the last of its
+kind. But on the contrary, as we advanced they became more deadly trying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length our way was barred by a very wide and straight crevasse, which I
+traced rapidly northward a mile or so without finding a crossing or hope of
+one; then down the glacier about as far, to where it united with another
+uncrossable crevasse. In all this distance of perhaps two miles there was only
+one place where I could possibly jump it, but the width of this jump was the
+utmost I dared attempt, while the danger of slipping on the farther side was so
+great that I was loath to try it. Furthermore, the side I was on was about a
+foot higher than the other, and even with this advantage the crevasse seemed
+dangerously wide. One is liable to underestimate the width of crevasses where
+the magnitudes in general are great, I therefore stared at this one mighty
+keenly, estimating its width and the shape of the edge on the farther side,
+until I thought that I could jump it if necessary, but that in case I should be
+compelled to jump back from the lower side I might fail. Now, a cautious
+mountaineer seldom takes a step on unknown ground which seems at all dangerous
+that he cannot retrace in case he should be stopped by unseen obstacles ahead.
+This is the rule of mountaineers who live long, and, though in haste, I
+compelled myself to sit down and calmly deliberate before I broke it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Retracing my devious path in imagination as if it were drawn on a chart, I saw
+that I was recrossing the glacier a mile or two farther up stream than the
+course pursued in the morning, and that I was now entangled in a section I had
+not before seen. Should I risk this dangerous jump, or try to regain the woods
+on the west shore, make a fire, and have only hunger to endure while waiting
+for a new day? I had already crossed so broad a stretch of dangerous ice that I
+saw it would be difficult to get back to the woods through the storm, before
+dark, and the attempt would most likely result in a dismal night-dance on the
+glacier; while just beyond the present barrier the surface seemed more
+promising, and the east shore was now perhaps about as near as the west. I was
+therefore eager to go on. But this wide jump was a dreadful obstacle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, because of the dangers already behind me, I determined to venture
+against those that might be ahead, jumped and landed well, but with so little
+to spare that I more than ever dreaded being compelled to take that jump back
+from the lower side. Stickeen followed, making nothing of it, and we ran
+eagerly forward, hoping we were leaving all our troubles behind. But within the
+distance of a few hundred yards we were stopped by the widest crevasse yet
+encountered. Of course I made haste to explore it, hoping all might yet be
+remedied by finding a bridge or a way around either end. About three-fourths of
+a mile upstream I found that it united with the one we had just crossed, as I
+feared it would. Then, tracing it down, I found it joined the same crevasse at
+the lower end also, maintaining throughout its whole course a width of forty to
+fifty feet. Thus to my dismay I discovered that we were on a narrow island
+about two miles long, with two barely possible ways of escape: one back by the
+way we came, the other ahead by an almost inaccessible sliver-bridge that
+crossed the great crevasse from near the middle of it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this nerve-trying discovery I ran back to the sliver-bridge and
+cautiously examined it. Crevasses, caused by strains from variations in the
+rate of motion of different parts of the glacier and convexities in the
+channel, are mere cracks when they first open, so narrow as hardly to admit the
+blade of a pocket-knife, and gradually widen according to the extent of the
+strain and the depth of the glacier. Now some of these cracks are interrupted,
+like the cracks in wood, and in opening, the strip of ice between overlapping
+ends is dragged out, and may maintain a continuous connection between the
+sides, just as the two sides of a slivered crack in wood that is being split
+are connected. Some crevasses remain open for months or even years, and by the
+melting of their sides continue to increase in width long after the opening
+strain has ceased; while the sliver-bridges, level on top at first and
+perfectly safe, are at length melted to thin, vertical, knife-edged blades, the
+upper portion being most exposed to the weather; and since the exposure is
+greatest in the middle, they at length curve downward like the cables of
+suspension bridges. This one was evidently very old, for it had been weathered
+and wasted until it was the most dangerous and inaccessible that ever lay in my
+way. The width of the crevasse was here about fifty feet, and the sliver
+crossing diagonally was about seventy feet long; its thin knife-edge near the
+middle was depressed twenty-five or thirty feet below the level of the glacier,
+and the upcurving ends were attached to the sides eight or ten feet below the
+brink. Getting down the nearly vertical wall to the end of the sliver and up
+the other side were the main difficulties, and they seemed all but
+insurmountable. Of the many perils encountered in my years of wandering on
+mountains and glaciers none seemed so plain and stern and merciless as this.
+And it was presented when we were wet to the skin and hungry, the sky dark with
+quick driving snow, and the night near. But we were forced to face it. It was a
+tremendous necessity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beginning, not immediately above the sunken end of the bridge, but a little to
+one side, I cut a deep hollow on the brink for my knees to rest in. Then,
+leaning over, with my short-handled axe I cut a step sixteen or eighteen inches
+below, which on account of the sheerness of the wall was necessarily shallow.
+That step, however, was well made; its floor sloped slightly inward and formed
+a good hold for my heels. Then, slipping cautiously upon it, and crouching as
+low as possible, with my left side toward the wall, I steadied myself against
+the wind with my left hand in a slight notch, while with the right I cut other
+similar steps and notches in succession, guarding against losing balance by
+glinting of the axe, or by wind-gusts, for life and death were in every stroke
+and in the niceness of finish of every foothold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the end of the bridge was reached I chipped it down until I had made a
+level platform six or eight inches wide, and it was a trying thing to poise on
+this little slippery platform while bending over to get safely astride of the
+sliver. Crossing was then comparatively easy by chipping off the sharp edge
+with short, careful strokes, and hitching forward an inch or two at a time,
+keeping my balance with my knees pressed against the sides. The tremendous
+abyss on either hand I studiously ignored. To me the edge of that blue sliver
+was then all the world. But the most trying part of the adventure, after
+working my way across inch by inch and chipping another small platform, was to
+rise from the safe position astride and to cut a step-ladder in the nearly
+vertical face of the wall,&mdash;chipping, climbing, holding on with feet and
+fingers in mere notches. At such times one&rsquo;s whole body is eye, and
+common skill and fortitude are replaced by power beyond our call or knowledge.
+Never before had I been so long under deadly strain. How I got up that cliff I
+never could tell. The thing seemed to have been done by somebody else. I never
+have held death in contempt, though in the course of my explorations I have
+oftentimes felt that to meet one&rsquo;s fate on a noble mountain, or in the
+heart of a glacier, would be blessed as compared with death from disease, or
+from some shabby lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure,
+set so glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel
+gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But poor Stickeen, the wee, hairy, sleekit beastie, think of him! When I had
+decided to dare the bridge, and while I was on my knees chipping a hollow on
+the rounded brow above it, he came behind me, pushed his head past my shoulder,
+looked down and across, scanned the sliver and its approaches with his
+mysterious eyes, then looked me in the face with a startled air of surprise and
+concern, and began to mutter and whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with
+words, &ldquo;Surely, you are not going into that awful place.&rdquo; This was
+the first time I had seen him gaze deliberately into a crevasse, or into my
+face with an eager, speaking, troubled look. That he should have recognized and
+appreciated the danger at the first glance showed wonderful sagacity. Never
+before had the daring midget seemed to know that ice was slippery or that there
+was any such thing as danger anywhere. His looks and tones of voice when he
+began to complain and speak his fears were so human that I unconsciously talked
+to him in sympathy as I would to a frightened boy, and in trying to calm his
+fears perhaps in some measure moderated my own. &ldquo;Hush your fears, my
+boy,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we will get across safe, though it is not going to
+be easy. No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to
+save them. At the worst we can only slip, and then how grand a grave we will
+have, and by and by our nice bones will do good in the terminal moraine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my sermon was far from reassuring him: he began to cry, and after taking
+another piercing look at the tremendous gulf, ran away in desperate excitement,
+seeking some other crossing. By the time he got back, baffled of course, I had
+made a step or two. I dared not look back, but he made himself heard; and when
+he saw that I was certainly bent on crossing he cried aloud in despair. The
+danger was enough to daunt anybody, but it seems wonderful that he should have
+been able to weigh and appreciate it so justly. No mountaineer could have seen
+it more quickly or judged it more wisely, discriminating between real and
+apparent peril.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever, and after running
+back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would return to the brink
+of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and wailing as if in the bitterness
+of death. Could this be the silent, philosophic Stickeen? I shouted
+encouragement, telling him the bridge was not so bad as it looked, that I had
+left it flat and safe for his feet, and he could walk it easily. But he was
+afraid to try. Strange so small an animal should be capable of such big, wise
+fears. I called again and again in a reassuring tone to come on and fear
+nothing; that he could come if he would only try. He would hush for a moment,
+look down again at the bridge, and shout his unshakable conviction that he
+could never, never come that way; then lie back in despair, as if howling,
+&ldquo;O-o-oh! what a place! No-o-o, I can never go-o-o down there!&rdquo; His
+natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous storm of
+fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed ridiculous. But
+in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of death, and his heartrending
+cries might well have called Heaven to his help. Perhaps they did. So hidden
+before, he was now transparent, and one could see the workings of his heart and
+mind like the movements of a clock out of its case. His voice and gestures,
+hopes and fears, were so perfectly human that none could mistake them; while he
+seemed to understand every word of mine. I was troubled at the thought of
+having to leave him out all night, and of the danger of not finding him in the
+morning. It seemed impossible to get him to venture. To compel him to try
+through fear of being abandoned, I started off as if leaving him to his fate,
+and disappeared back of a hummock; but this did no good; he only lay down and
+moaned in utter hopeless misery. So, after hiding a few minutes, I went back to
+the brink of the crevasse and in a severe tone of voice shouted across to him
+that now I must certainly leave him, I could wait no longer, and that, if he
+would not come, all I could promise was that I would return to seek him next
+day. I warned him that if he went back to the woods the wolves would kill him,
+and finished by urging him once more by words and gestures to come on, come on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew very well what I meant, and at last, with the courage of despair,
+hushed and breathless, he crouched down on the brink in the hollow I had made
+for my knees, pressed his body against the ice as if trying to get the
+advantage of the friction of every hair, gazed into the first step, put his
+little feet together and slid them slowly, slowly over the edge and down into
+it, bunching all four in it and almost standing on his head. Then, without
+lifting his feet, as well as I could see through the snow, he slowly worked
+them over the edge of the step and down into the next and the next in
+succession in the same way, and gained the end of the bridge. Then, lifting his
+feet with the regularity and slowness of the vibrations of a seconds pendulum,
+as if counting and measuring <em>one-two-three</em>, holding himself steady
+against the gusty wind, and giving separate attention to each little step, he
+gained the foot of the cliff, while I was on my knees leaning over to give him
+a lift should he succeed in getting within reach of my arm. Here he halted in
+dead silence, and it was here I feared he might fail, for dogs are poor
+climbers. I had no cord. If I had had one, I would have dropped a noose over
+his head and hauled him up. But while I was thinking whether an available cord
+might be made out of clothing, he was looking keenly into the series of notched
+steps and finger-holds I had made, as if counting them, and fixing the position
+of each one of them in his mind. Then suddenly up he came in a springy rush,
+hooking his paws into the steps and notches so quickly that I could not see how
+it was done, and whizzed past my head, safe at last!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now came a scene! &ldquo;Well done, well done, little boy! Brave
+boy!&rdquo; I cried, trying to catch and caress him; but he would not be
+caught. Never before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a
+revulsion from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant, uncontrollable
+joy. He flashed and darted hither and thither as if fairly demented, screaming
+and shouting, swirling round and round in giddy loops and circles like a leaf
+in a whirlwind, lying down, and rolling over and over, sidewise and heels over
+head, and pouring forth a tumultuous flood of hysterical cries and sobs and
+gasping mutterings. When I ran up to him to shake him, fearing he might die of
+joy, he flashed off two or three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion;
+then, turning suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself at my
+face, almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and screaming and
+shouting as if saying, &ldquo;Saved! saved! saved!&rdquo; Then away again,
+dropping suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling and fairly
+sobbing. Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him. Moses&rsquo; stately
+song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red Sea was nothing to it.
+Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull, enduring little fellow for all
+that most stirs this mortal frame? Nobody could have helped crying with him!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy. So I ran
+ahead, calling him in as gruff a voice as I could command to come on and stop
+his nonsense, for we had far to go and it would soon be dark. Neither of us
+feared another trial like this. Heaven would surely count one enough for a
+lifetime. The ice ahead was gashed by thousands of crevasses, but they were
+common ones. The joy of deliverance burned in us like fire, and we ran without
+fatigue, every muscle with immense rebound glorying in its strength. Stickeen
+flew across everything in his way, and not till dark did he settle into his
+normal fox-like trot. At last the cloudy mountains came in sight, and we soon
+felt the solid rock beneath our feet, and were safe. Then came weakness. Danger
+had vanished, and so had our strength. We tottered down the lateral moraine in
+the dark, over boulders and tree trunks, through the bushes and devil-club
+thickets of the grove where we had sheltered ourselves in the morning, and
+across the level mud-slope of the terminal moraine. We reached camp about ten
+o&rsquo;clock, and found a big fire and a big supper. A party of Hoona Indians
+had visited Mr. Young, bringing a gift of porpoise meat and wild strawberries,
+and Hunter Joe had brought in a wild goat. But we lay down, too tired to eat
+much, and soon fell into a troubled sleep. The man who said, &ldquo;The harder
+the toil, the sweeter the rest,&rdquo; never was profoundly tired. Stickeen
+kept springing up and muttering in his sleep, no doubt dreaming that he was
+still on the brink of the crevasse; and so did I, that night and many others
+long afterward, when I was overtired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereafter Stickeen was a changed dog. During the rest of the trip, instead of
+holding aloof, he always lay by my side, tried to keep me constantly in sight,
+and would hardly accept a morsel of food, however tempting, from any hand but
+mine. At night, when all was quiet about the camp-fire, he would come to me and
+rest his head on my knee with a look of devotion as if I were his god. And
+often as he caught my eye he seemed to be trying to say, &ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t
+that an awful time we had together on the glacier?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Nothing in after years has dimmed that Alaska storm-day. As I write it all
+comes rushing and roaring to mind as if I were again in the heart of it. Again
+I see the gray flying clouds with their rain-floods and snow, the ice-cliffs
+towering above the shrinking forest, the majestic ice-cascade, the vast glacier
+outspread before its white mountain fountains, and in the heart of it the
+tremendous crevasse,&mdash;emblem of the valley of the shadow of
+death,&mdash;low clouds trailing over it, the snow falling into it; and on its
+brink I see little Stickeen, and I hear his cries for help and his shouts of
+joy. I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and
+devotion; but to none do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least
+promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known
+of them all. Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as
+through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all
+my fellow mortals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None of Stickeen&rsquo;s friends knows what finally became of him. After my
+work for the season was done I departed for California, and I never saw the
+dear little fellow again. In reply to anxious inquiries his master wrote me
+that in the summer of 1883 he was stolen by a tourist at Fort Wrangel and taken
+away on a steamer. His fate is wrapped in mystery. Doubtless he has left this
+world&mdash;crossed the last crevasse&mdash;and gone to another. But he will
+not be forgotten. To me Stickeen is immortal.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11673 ***</div>
+</body>
+
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #11673 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11673)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stickeen, by John Muir
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Stickeen
+
+Author: John Muir
+
+Release Date: March 22, 2004 [eBook #11673]
+[Most recently updated: July 15, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Audrey Longhurst and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STICKEEN ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Stickeen
+
+by John Muir
+
+1909
+
+
+
+
+TO
+HELEN MUIR
+
+Lover of wildness
+this icy storm-story
+is affectionately
+dedicated
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DOG BLANCO
+BY J.G. HOLLAND
+
+
+My dear dumb friend, low lying there,
+    A willing vassal at my feet;
+Glad partner of my home and fare,
+    My shadow in the street;
+
+I look into your great brown eyes,
+    Where love and loyal homage shine,
+And wonder where the difference lies
+    Between your soul and mine!
+
+ . . . . . . .
+
+I scan the whole broad earth around
+    For that one heart which, leal and true,
+Bears friendship without end or bound,
+    And find the prize in you.
+
+ . . . . . . .
+
+Ah, Blanco! did I worship God
+    As truly as you worship me,
+Or follow where my Master trod
+    With your humility:
+
+Did I sit fondly at His feet
+    As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,
+And watch Him with a love as sweet,
+    My life would grow divine!
+
+
+
+
+STICKEEN
+
+
+In the summer of 1880 I set out from Fort Wrangel in a canoe to
+continue the exploration of the icy region of southeastern Alaska,
+begun in the fall of 1879. After the necessary provisions, blankets,
+etc., had been collected and stowed away, and my Indian crew were in
+their places ready to start, while a crowd of their relatives and
+friends on the wharf were bidding them good-by and good-luck, my
+companion, the Rev. S.H. Young, for whom we were waiting, at last came
+aboard, followed by a little black dog, that immediately made himself
+at home by curling up in a hollow among the baggage. I like dogs, but
+this one seemed so small and worthless that I objected to his going,
+and asked the missionary why he was taking him.
+
+“Such a little helpless creature will only be in the way,” I said; “you
+had better pass him up to the Indian boys on the wharf, to be taken
+home to play with the children. This trip is not likely to be good for
+toy-dogs. The poor silly thing will be in rain and snow for weeks or
+months, and will require care like a baby.”
+
+But his master assured me that he would be no trouble at all; that he
+was a perfect wonder of a dog, could endure cold and hunger like a
+bear, swim like a seal, and was wondrous wise and cunning, etc., making
+out a list of virtues to show he might be the most interesting member
+of the party.
+
+Nobody could hope to unravel the lines of his ancestry. In all the
+wonderfully mixed and varied dog-tribe I never saw any creature very
+much like him, though in some of his sly, soft, gliding motions and
+gestures he brought the fox to mind. He was short-legged and
+bunchy-bodied, and his hair, though smooth, was long and silky and
+slightly waved, so that when the wind was at his back it ruffled,
+making him look shaggy. At first sight his only noticeable feature was
+his fine tail, which was about as airy and shady as a squirrel’s, and
+was carried curling forward almost to his nose. On closer inspection
+you might notice his thin sensitive ears, and sharp eyes with cunning
+tan-spots above them. Mr. Young told me that when the little fellow was
+a pup about the size of a woodrat he was presented to his wife by an
+Irish prospector at Sitka, and that on his arrival at Fort Wrangel he
+was adopted with enthusiasm by the Stickeen Indians as a sort of new
+good-luck totem, was named “Stickeen” for the tribe, and became a
+universal favorite; petted, protected, and admired wherever he went,
+and regarded as a mysterious fountain of wisdom.
+
+On our trip he soon proved himself a queer character—odd, concealed,
+independent, keeping invincibly quiet, and doing many little puzzling
+things that piqued my curiosity. As we sailed week after week through
+the long intricate channels and inlets among the innumerable islands
+and mountains of the coast, he spent most of the dull days in sluggish
+ease, motionless, and apparently as unobserving as if in deep sleep.
+But I discovered that somehow he always knew what was going on. When
+the Indians were about to shoot at ducks or seals, or when anything
+along the shore was exciting our attention, he would rest his chin on
+the edge of the canoe and calmly look out like a dreamy-eyed tourist.
+And when he heard us talking about making a landing, he immediately
+roused himself to see what sort of a place we were coming to, and made
+ready to jump overboard and swim ashore as soon as the canoe neared the
+beach. Then, with a vigorous shake to get rid of the brine in his hair,
+he ran into the woods to hunt small game. But though always the first
+out of the canoe, he was always the last to get into it. When we were
+ready to start he could never be found, and refused to come to our
+call. We soon found out, however, that though we could not see him at
+such times, he saw us, and from the cover of the briers and huckleberry
+bushes in the fringe of the woods was watching the canoe with wary eye.
+For as soon as we were fairly off he came trotting down the beach,
+plunged into the surf, and swam after us, knowing well that we would
+cease rowing and take him in. When the contrary little vagabond came
+alongside, he was lifted by the neck, held at arm’s length a moment to
+drip, and dropped aboard. We tried to cure him of this trick by
+compelling him to swim a long way, as if we had a mind to abandon him;
+but this did no good: the longer the swim the better he seemed to like
+it.
+
+Though capable of great idleness, he never failed to be ready for all
+sorts of adventures and excursions. One pitch-dark rainy night we
+landed about ten o’clock at the mouth of a salmon stream when the water
+was phosphorescent. The salmon were running, and the myriad fins of the
+onrushing multitude were churning all the stream into a silvery glow,
+wonderfully beautiful and impressive in the ebon darkness. To get a
+good view of the show I set out with one of the Indians and sailed up
+through the midst of it to the foot of a rapid about half a mile from
+camp, where the swift current dashing over rocks made the luminous glow
+most glorious. Happening to look back down the stream, while the Indian
+was catching a few of the struggling fish, I saw a long spreading fan
+of light like the tail of a comet, which we thought must be made by
+some big strange animal that was pursuing us. On it came with its
+magnificent train, until we imagined we could see the monster’s head
+and eyes; but it was only Stickeen, who, finding I had left the camp,
+came swimming after me to see what was up.
+
+When we camped early, the best hunter of the crew usually went to the
+woods for a deer, and Stickeen was sure to be at his heels, provided I
+had not gone out. For, strange to say, though I never carried a gun, he
+always followed me, forsaking the hunter and even his master to share
+my wanderings. The days that were too stormy for sailing I spent in the
+woods, or on the adjacent mountains, wherever my studies called me; and
+Stickeen always insisted on going with me, however wild the weather,
+gliding like a fox through dripping huckleberry bushes and thorny
+tangles of panax and rubus, scarce stirring their rain-laden leaves;
+wading and wallowing through snow, swimming icy streams, skipping over
+logs and rocks and the crevasses of glaciers with the patience and
+endurance of a determined mountaineer, never tiring or getting
+discouraged. Once he followed me over a glacier the surface of which
+was so crusty and rough that it cut his feet until every step was
+marked with blood; but he trotted on with Indian fortitude until I
+noticed his red track, and, taking pity on him, made him a set of
+moccasins out of a handkerchief. However great his troubles he never
+asked help or made any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he had
+learned that without hard work and suffering there could be no pleasure
+worth having.
+
+Yet none of us was able to make out what Stickeen was really good for.
+He seemed to meet danger and hardships without anything like reason,
+insisted on having his own way, never obeyed an order, and the hunter
+could never set him on anything, or make him fetch the birds he shot.
+His equanimity was so steady it seemed due to want of feeling; ordinary
+storms were pleasures to him, and as for mere rain, he flourished in it
+like a vegetable. No matter what advances you might make, scarce a
+glance or a tail-wag would you get for your pains. But though he was
+apparently as cold as a glacier and about as impervious to fun, I tried
+hard to make his acquaintance, guessing there must be something worth
+while hidden beneath so much courage, endurance, and love of
+wild-weathery adventure. No superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old
+in office surpassed this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes
+reminded me of a small, squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never
+displayed a single trace of the merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the
+terriers and collies that we all know, nor of their touching affection
+and devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be loved and
+allowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to be
+let alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor of
+his hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature. His strength
+of character lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills, and as
+young, and as wild. I never tired of looking into them: it was like
+looking into a landscape; but they were small and rather deep-set, and
+had no explaining lines around them to give out particulars. I was
+accustomed to look into the faces of plants and animals, and I watched
+the little sphinx more and more keenly as an interesting study. But
+there is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our
+lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for
+it is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and
+made perfect.
+
+After exploring the Sumdum and Tahkoo fiords and their glaciers, we
+sailed through Stephen’s Passage into Lynn Canal and thence through Icy
+Strait into Cross Sound, searching for unexplored inlets leading toward
+the great fountain ice-fields of the Fairweather Range. Here, while the
+tide was in our favor, we were accompanied by a fleet of icebergs
+drifting out to the ocean from Glacier Bay. Slowly we paddled around
+Vancouver’s Point, Wimbledon, our frail canoe tossed like a feather on
+the massive heaving swells coming in past Cape Spenser. For miles the
+sound is bounded by precipitous mural cliffs, which, lashed with
+wave-spray and their heads hidden in clouds, looked terribly
+threatening and stern. Had our canoe been crushed or upset we could
+have made no landing here, for the cliffs, as high as those of
+Yosemite, sink sheer into deep water. Eagerly we scanned the wall on
+the north side for the first sign of an opening fiord or harbor, all of
+us anxious except Stickeen, who dozed in peace or gazed dreamily at the
+tremendous precipices when he heard us talking about them. At length we
+made the joyful discovery of the mouth of the inlet now called “Taylor
+Bay,” and about five o’clock reached the head of it and encamped in a
+spruce grove near the front of a large glacier.
+
+While camp was being made, Joe the hunter climbed the mountain wall on
+the east side of the fiord in pursuit of wild goats, while Mr. Young
+and I went to the glacier. We found that it is separated from the
+waters of the inlet by a tide-washed moraine, and extends, an abrupt
+barrier, all the way across from wall to wall of the inlet, a distance
+of about three miles. But our most interesting discovery was that it
+had recently advanced, though again slightly receding. A portion of the
+terminal moraine had been plowed up and shoved forward, uprooting and
+overwhelming the woods on the east side. Many of the trees were down
+and buried, or nearly so, others were leaning away from the ice-cliffs,
+ready to fall, and some stood erect, with the bottom of the ice plow
+still beneath their roots and its lofty crystal spires towering high
+above their tops. The spectacle presented by these century-old trees
+standing close beside a spiry wall of ice, with their branches almost
+touching it, was most novel and striking. And when I climbed around the
+front, and a little way up the west side of the glacier, I found that
+it had swelled and increased in height and width in accordance with its
+advance, and carried away the outer ranks of trees on its bank.
+
+On our way back to camp after these first observations I planned a
+far-and-wide excursion for the morrow. I awoke early, called not only
+by the glacier, which had been on my mind all night, but by a grand
+flood-storm. The wind was blowing a gale from the north and the rain
+was flying with the clouds in a wide passionate horizontal flood, as if
+it were all passing over the country instead of falling on it. The main
+perennial streams were booming high above their banks, and hundreds of
+new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty gray walls of
+the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a cup of
+coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when
+I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of
+Nature’s finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful
+to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with
+them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and
+chanting with the old Norsemen, “The blast of the tempest aids our
+oars, the hurricane is our servant and drives us whither we wish to
+go.” So, omitting breakfast, I put a piece of bread in my pocket and
+hurried away.
+
+Mr. Young and the Indians were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen;
+but I had not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in the tent and
+came boring through the blast after me. That a man should welcome
+storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God
+making landscapes, is reasonable enough; but what fascination could
+there be in such tremendous weather for a dog? Surely nothing akin to
+human enthusiasm for scenery or geology. Anyhow, on he came,
+breakfastless, through the choking blast. I stopped and did my best to
+turn him back. “Now don’t,” I said, shouting to make myself heard in
+the storm, “now don’t, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle
+now? You must be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. There is no
+game abroad, nothing but weather. Go back to camp and keep warm, get a
+good breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. I can’t
+carry you all day or feed you, and this storm will kill you.”
+
+But Nature, it seems, was at the bottom of the affair, and she gains
+her ends with dogs as well as with men, making us do as she likes,
+shoving and pulling us along her ways, however rough, all but killing
+us at times in getting her lessons driven hard home. After I had
+stopped again and again, shouting good warning advice, I saw that he
+was not to be shaken off; as well might the earth try to shake off the
+moon. I had once led his master into trouble, when he fell on one of
+the topmost jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm; now the turn of
+his humble companion was coming. The pitiful little wanderer just stood
+there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, “Where thou
+goest I will go.” So at last I told him to come on if he must, and gave
+him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket; then we struggled on
+together, and thus began the most memorable of all my wild days.
+
+The level flood, driving hard in our faces, thrashed and washed us
+wildly until we got into the shelter of a grove on the east side of the
+glacier near the front, where we stopped awhile for breath and to
+listen and look out. The exploration of the glacier was my main object,
+but the wind was too high to allow excursions over its open surface,
+where one might be dangerously shoved while balancing for a jump on the
+brink of a crevasse. In the mean time the storm was a fine study. Here
+the end of the glacier, descending an abrupt swell of resisting rock
+about five hundred feet high, leans forward and falls in ice cascades.
+And as the storm came down the glacier from the north, Stickeen and I
+were beneath the main current of the blast, while favorably located to
+see and hear it. What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the
+smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small
+voices of the storm! Detached wafts and swirls were coming through the
+woods, with music from the leaves and branches and furrowed boles, and
+even from the splintered rocks and ice-crags overhead, many of the
+tones soft and low and flute-like, as if each leaf and tree, crag and
+spire were a tuned reed. A broad torrent, draining the side of the
+glacier, now swollen by scores of new streams from the mountains, was
+rolling boulders along its rocky channel, with thudding, bumping,
+muffled sounds, rushing towards the bay with tremendous energy, as if
+in haste to get out of the mountains; the waters above and beneath
+calling to each other, and all to the ocean, their home.
+
+Looking southward from our shelter, we had this great torrent and the
+forested mountain wall above it on our left, the spiry ice-crags on our
+right, and smooth gray gloom ahead. I tried to draw the marvelous scene
+in my note-book, but the rain blurred the page in spite of all my pains
+to shelter it, and the sketch was almost worthless. When the wind began
+to abate, I traced the east side of the glacier. All the trees standing
+on the edge of the woods were barked and bruised, showing high-ice mark
+in a very telling way, while tens of thousands of those that had stood
+for centuries on the bank of the glacier farther out lay crushed and
+being crushed. In many places I could see down fifty feet or so beneath
+the margin of the glacier-mill, where trunks from one to two feet in
+diameter were being ground to pulp against outstanding rock-ribs and
+bosses of the bank.
+
+About three miles above the front of the glacier I climbed to the
+surface of it by means of axe-steps made easy for Stickeen. As far as
+the eye could reach, the level, or nearly level, glacier stretched away
+indefinitely beneath the gray sky, a seemingly boundless prairie of
+ice. The rain continued, and grew colder, which I did not mind, but a
+dim snowy look in the drooping clouds made me hesitate about venturing
+far from land. No trace of the west shore was visible, and in case the
+clouds should settle and give snow, or the wind again become violent, I
+feared getting caught in a tangle of crevasses. Snow-crystals, the
+flowers of the mountain clouds, are frail, beautiful things, but
+terrible when flying on storm-winds in darkening, benumbing swarms or
+when welded together into glaciers full of deadly crevasses. Watching
+the weather, I sauntered about on the crystal sea. For a mile or two
+out I found the ice remarkably safe. The marginal crevasses were mostly
+narrow, while the few wider ones were easily avoided by passing around
+them, and the clouds began to open here and there.
+
+Thus encouraged, I at last pushed out for the other side; for Nature
+can make us do anything she likes. At first we made rapid progress, and
+the sky was not very threatening, while I took bearings occasionally
+with a pocket compass to enable me to find my way back more surely in
+case the storm should become blinding; but the structure lines of the
+glacier were my main guide. Toward the west side we came to a closely
+crevassed section in which we had to make long, narrow tacks and
+doublings, tracing the edges of tremendous transverse and longitudinal
+crevasses, many of which were from twenty to thirty feet wide, and
+perhaps a thousand feet deep—beautiful and awful. In working a way
+through them I was severely cautious, but Stickeen came on as
+unhesitating as the flying clouds. The widest crevasse that I could
+jump he would leap without so much as halting to take a look at it. The
+weather was now making quick changes, scattering bits of dazzling
+brightness through the wintry gloom; at rare intervals, when the sun
+broke forth wholly free, 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 blocks, suggesting the wildest updashing, heaving, plunging
+motion of a great river cataract. Tracing it down three or four miles,
+I found that it discharged into a lake, filling it with icebergs.
+
+I would gladly have followed the lake outlet to tide-water, but the day
+was already far spent, and the threatening sky called for haste on the
+return trip to get off the ice before dark. I decided therefore to go
+no farther, and, after taking a general view of the wonderful region,
+turned back, hoping to see it again under more favorable auspices. We
+made good speed up the cañon of the great ice-torrent, and out on the
+main glacier until we had left the west shore about two miles behind
+us. Here we got into a difficult network of crevasses, the gathering
+clouds began to drop misty fringes, and soon the dreaded snow came
+flying thick and fast. I now began to feel anxious about finding a way
+in the blurring storm. Stickeen showed no trace of fear. He was still
+the same silent, able little hero. I noticed, however, that after the
+storm-darkness came on he kept close up behind me. The snow urged us to
+make still greater haste, but at the same time hid our way. I pushed on
+as best I could, jumping innumerable crevasses, and for every hundred
+rods or so of direct advance traveling a mile in doubling up and down
+in the turmoil of chasms and dislocated ice-blocks. After an hour or
+two of this work we came to a series of longitudinal crevasses of
+appalling width, and almost straight and regular in trend, like immense
+furrows. These I traced with firm nerve, excited and strengthened by
+the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on their dizzy edges
+after cutting hollows for my feet before making the spring, to avoid
+possible slipping or any uncertainty on the farther sides, where only
+one trial is granted—exercise at once frightful and inspiring. Stickeen
+followed seemingly without effort.
+
+Many a mile we thus traveled, mostly up and down, making but little
+real headway in crossing, running instead of walking most of the time
+as the danger of being compelled to spend the night on the glacier
+became threatening. Stickeen seemed able for anything. Doubtless we
+could have weathered the storm for one night, dancing on a flat spot to
+keep from freezing, and I faced the threat without feeling anything
+like despair; but we were hungry and wet, and the wind from the
+mountains was still thick with snow and bitterly cold, so of course
+that night would have seemed a very long one. I could not see far
+enough through the blurring snow to judge in which general direction
+the least dangerous route lay, while the few dim, momentary glimpses I
+caught of mountains through rifts in the flying clouds were far from
+encouraging either as weather signs or as guides. I had simply to grope
+my way from crevasse to crevasse, holding a general direction by the
+ice-structure, which was not to be seen everywhere, and partly by the
+wind. Again and again I was put to my mettle, but Stickeen followed
+easily, his nerve apparently growing more unflinching as the danger
+increased. So it always is with mountaineers when hard beset. Running
+hard and jumping, holding every minute of the remaining daylight, poor
+as it was, precious, we doggedly persevered and tried to hope that
+every difficult crevasse we overcame would prove to be the last of its
+kind. But on the contrary, as we advanced they became more deadly
+trying.
+
+At length our way was barred by a very wide and straight crevasse,
+which I traced rapidly northward a mile or so without finding a
+crossing or hope of one; then down the glacier about as far, to where
+it united with another uncrossable crevasse. In all this distance of
+perhaps two miles there was only one place where I could possibly jump
+it, but the width of this jump was the utmost I dared attempt, while
+the danger of slipping on the farther side was so great that I was
+loath to try it. Furthermore, the side I was on was about a foot higher
+than the other, and even with this advantage the crevasse seemed
+dangerously wide. One is liable to underestimate the width of crevasses
+where the magnitudes in general are great, I therefore stared at this
+one mighty keenly, estimating its width and the shape of the edge on
+the farther side, until I thought that I could jump it if necessary,
+but that in case I should be compelled to jump back from the lower side
+I might fail. Now, a cautious mountaineer seldom takes a step on
+unknown ground which seems at all dangerous that he cannot retrace in
+case he should be stopped by unseen obstacles ahead. This is the rule
+of mountaineers who live long, and, though in haste, I compelled myself
+to sit down and calmly deliberate before I broke it.
+
+Retracing my devious path in imagination as if it were drawn on a
+chart, I saw that I was recrossing the glacier a mile or two farther up
+stream than the course pursued in the morning, and that I was now
+entangled in a section I had not before seen. Should I risk this
+dangerous jump, or try to regain the woods on the west shore, make a
+fire, and have only hunger to endure while waiting for a new day? I had
+already crossed so broad a stretch of dangerous ice that I saw it would
+be difficult to get back to the woods through the storm, before dark,
+and the attempt would most likely result in a dismal night-dance on the
+glacier; while just beyond the present barrier the surface seemed more
+promising, and the east shore was now perhaps about as near as the
+west. I was therefore eager to go on. But this wide jump was a dreadful
+obstacle.
+
+At length, because of the dangers already behind me, I determined to
+venture against those that might be ahead, jumped and landed well, but
+with so little to spare that I more than ever dreaded being compelled
+to take that jump back from the lower side. Stickeen followed, making
+nothing of it, and we ran eagerly forward, hoping we were leaving all
+our troubles behind. But within the distance of a few hundred yards we
+were stopped by the widest crevasse yet encountered. Of course I made
+haste to explore it, hoping all might yet be remedied by finding a
+bridge or a way around either end. About three-fourths of a mile
+upstream I found that it united with the one we had just crossed, as I
+feared it would. Then, tracing it down, I found it joined the same
+crevasse at the lower end also, maintaining throughout its whole course
+a width of forty to fifty feet. Thus to my dismay I discovered that we
+were on a narrow island about two miles long, with two barely possible
+ways of escape: one back by the way we came, the other ahead by an
+almost inaccessible sliver-bridge that crossed the great crevasse from
+near the middle of it!
+
+After this nerve-trying discovery I ran back to the sliver-bridge and
+cautiously examined it. Crevasses, caused by strains from variations in
+the rate of motion of different parts of the glacier and convexities in
+the channel, are mere cracks when they first open, so narrow as hardly
+to admit the blade of a pocket-knife, and gradually widen according to
+the extent of the strain and the depth of the glacier. Now some of
+these cracks are interrupted, like the cracks in wood, and in opening,
+the strip of ice between overlapping ends is dragged out, and may
+maintain a continuous connection between the sides, just as the two
+sides of a slivered crack in wood that is being split are connected.
+Some crevasses remain open for months or even years, and by the melting
+of their sides continue to increase in width long after the opening
+strain has ceased; while the sliver-bridges, level on top at first and
+perfectly safe, are at length melted to thin, vertical, knife-edged
+blades, the upper portion being most exposed to the weather; and since
+the exposure is greatest in the middle, they at length curve downward
+like the cables of suspension bridges. This one was evidently very old,
+for it had been weathered and wasted until it was the most dangerous
+and inaccessible that ever lay in my way. The width of the crevasse was
+here about fifty feet, and the sliver crossing diagonally was about
+seventy feet long; its thin knife-edge near the middle was depressed
+twenty-five or thirty feet below the level of the glacier, and the
+upcurving ends were attached to the sides eight or ten feet below the
+brink. Getting down the nearly vertical wall to the end of the sliver
+and up the other side were the main difficulties, and they seemed all
+but insurmountable. Of the many perils encountered in my years of
+wandering on mountains and glaciers none seemed so plain and stern and
+merciless as this. And it was presented when we were wet to the skin
+and hungry, the sky dark with quick driving snow, and the night near.
+But we were forced to face it. It was a tremendous necessity.
+
+Beginning, not immediately above the sunken end of the bridge, but a
+little to one side, I cut a deep hollow on the brink for my knees to
+rest in. Then, leaning over, with my short-handled axe I cut a step
+sixteen or eighteen inches below, which on account of the sheerness of
+the wall was necessarily shallow. That step, however, was well made;
+its floor sloped slightly inward and formed a good hold for my heels.
+Then, slipping cautiously upon it, and crouching as low as possible,
+with my left side toward the wall, I steadied myself against the wind
+with my left hand in a slight notch, while with the right I cut other
+similar steps and notches in succession, guarding against losing
+balance by glinting of the axe, or by wind-gusts, for life and death
+were in every stroke and in the niceness of finish of every foothold.
+
+After the end of the bridge was reached I chipped it down until I had
+made a level platform six or eight inches wide, and it was a trying
+thing to poise on this little slippery platform while bending over to
+get safely astride of the sliver. Crossing was then comparatively easy
+by chipping off the sharp edge with short, careful strokes, and
+hitching forward an inch or two at a time, keeping my balance with my
+knees pressed against the sides. The tremendous abyss on either hand I
+studiously ignored. To me the edge of that blue sliver was then all the
+world. But the most trying part of the adventure, after working my way
+across inch by inch and chipping another small platform, was to rise
+from the safe position astride and to cut a step-ladder in the nearly
+vertical face of the wall,—chipping, climbing, holding on with feet and
+fingers in mere notches. At such times one’s whole body is eye, and
+common skill and fortitude are replaced by power beyond our call or
+knowledge. Never before had I been so long under deadly strain. How I
+got up that cliff I never could tell. The thing seemed to have been
+done by somebody else. I never have held death in contempt, though in
+the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one’s
+fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be
+blessed as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby
+lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so
+glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel
+gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen
+lives.
+
+But poor Stickeen, the wee, hairy, sleekit beastie, think of him! When
+I had decided to dare the bridge, and while I was on my knees chipping
+a hollow on the rounded brow above it, he came behind me, pushed his
+head past my shoulder, looked down and across, scanned the sliver and
+its approaches with his mysterious eyes, then looked me in the face
+with a startled air of surprise and concern, and began to mutter and
+whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with words, “Surely, you are
+not going into that awful place.” This was the first time I had seen
+him gaze deliberately into a crevasse, or into my face with an eager,
+speaking, troubled look. That he should have recognized and appreciated
+the danger at the first glance showed wonderful sagacity. Never before
+had the daring midget seemed to know that ice was slippery or that
+there was any such thing as danger anywhere. His looks and tones of
+voice when he began to complain and speak his fears were so human that
+I unconsciously talked to him in sympathy as I would to a frightened
+boy, and in trying to calm his fears perhaps in some measure moderated
+my own. “Hush your fears, my boy,” I said, “we will get across safe,
+though it is not going to be easy. No right way is easy in this rough
+world. We must risk our lives to save them. At the worst we can only
+slip, and then how grand a grave we will have, and by and by our nice
+bones will do good in the terminal moraine.”
+
+But my sermon was far from reassuring him: he began to cry, and after
+taking another piercing look at the tremendous gulf, ran away in
+desperate excitement, seeking some other crossing. By the time he got
+back, baffled of course, I had made a step or two. I dared not look
+back, but he made himself heard; and when he saw that I was certainly
+bent on crossing he cried aloud in despair. The danger was enough to
+daunt anybody, but it seems wonderful that he should have been able to
+weigh and appreciate it so justly. No mountaineer could have seen it
+more quickly or judged it more wisely, discriminating between real and
+apparent peril.
+
+When I gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever, and after
+running back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would
+return to the brink of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and
+wailing as if in the bitterness of death. Could this be the silent,
+philosophic Stickeen? I shouted encouragement, telling him the bridge
+was not so bad as it looked, that I had left it flat and safe for his
+feet, and he could walk it easily. But he was afraid to try. Strange so
+small an animal should be capable of such big, wise fears. I called
+again and again in a reassuring tone to come on and fear nothing; that
+he could come if he would only try. He would hush for a moment, look
+down again at the bridge, and shout his unshakable conviction that he
+could never, never come that way; then lie back in despair, as if
+howling, “O-o-oh! what a place! No-o-o, I can never go-o-o down there!”
+His natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous
+storm of fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed
+ridiculous. But in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of
+death, and his heartrending cries might well have called Heaven to his
+help. Perhaps they did. So hidden before, he was now transparent, and
+one could see the workings of his heart and mind like the movements of
+a clock out of its case. His voice and gestures, hopes and fears, were
+so perfectly human that none could mistake them; while he seemed to
+understand every word of mine. I was troubled at the thought of having
+to leave him out all night, and of the danger of not finding him in the
+morning. It seemed impossible to get him to venture. To compel him to
+try through fear of being abandoned, I started off as if leaving him to
+his fate, and disappeared back of a hummock; but this did no good; he
+only lay down and moaned in utter hopeless misery. So, after hiding a
+few minutes, I went back to the brink of the crevasse and in a severe
+tone of voice shouted across to him that now I must certainly leave
+him, I could wait no longer, and that, if he would not come, all I
+could promise was that I would return to seek him next day. I warned
+him that if he went back to the woods the wolves would kill him, and
+finished by urging him once more by words and gestures to come on, come
+on.
+
+He knew very well what I meant, and at last, with the courage of
+despair, hushed and breathless, he crouched down on the brink in the
+hollow I had made for my knees, pressed his body against the ice as if
+trying to get the advantage of the friction of every hair, gazed into
+the first step, put his little feet together and slid them slowly,
+slowly over the edge and down into it, bunching all four in it and
+almost standing on his head. Then, without lifting his feet, as well as
+I could see through the snow, he slowly worked them over the edge of
+the step and down into the next and the next in succession in the same
+way, and gained the end of the bridge. Then, lifting his feet with the
+regularity and slowness of the vibrations of a seconds pendulum, as if
+counting and measuring one-two-three, holding himself steady against
+the gusty wind, and giving separate attention to each little step, he
+gained the foot of the cliff, while I was on my knees leaning over to
+give him a lift should he succeed in getting within reach of my arm.
+Here he halted in dead silence, and it was here I feared he might fail,
+for dogs are poor climbers. I had no cord. If I had had one, I would
+have dropped a noose over his head and hauled him up. But while I was
+thinking whether an available cord might be made out of clothing, he
+was looking keenly into the series of notched steps and finger-holds I
+had made, as if counting them, and fixing the position of each one of
+them in his mind. Then suddenly up he came in a springy rush, hooking
+his paws into the steps and notches so quickly that I could not see how
+it was done, and whizzed past my head, safe at last!
+
+And now came a scene! “Well done, well done, little boy! Brave boy!” I
+cried, trying to catch and caress him; but he would not be caught.
+Never before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a
+revulsion from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant,
+uncontrollable joy. He flashed and darted hither and thither as if
+fairly demented, screaming and shouting, swirling round and round in
+giddy loops and circles like a leaf in a whirlwind, lying down, and
+rolling over and over, sidewise and heels over head, and pouring forth
+a tumultuous flood of hysterical cries and sobs and gasping mutterings.
+When I ran up to him to shake him, fearing he might die of joy, he
+flashed off two or three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion;
+then, turning suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself
+at my face, almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and
+screaming and shouting as if saying, “Saved! saved! saved!” Then away
+again, dropping suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling
+and fairly sobbing. Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him.
+Moses’ stately song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red
+Sea was nothing to it. Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull,
+enduring little fellow for all that most stirs this mortal frame?
+Nobody could have helped crying with him!
+
+But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy.
+So I ran ahead, calling him in as gruff a voice as I could command to
+come on and stop his nonsense, for we had far to go and it would soon
+be dark. Neither of us feared another trial like this. Heaven would
+surely count one enough for a lifetime. The ice ahead was gashed by
+thousands of crevasses, but they were common ones. The joy of
+deliverance burned in us like fire, and we ran without fatigue, every
+muscle with immense rebound glorying in its strength. Stickeen flew
+across everything in his way, and not till dark did he settle into his
+normal fox-like trot. At last the cloudy mountains came in sight, and
+we soon felt the solid rock beneath our feet, and were safe. Then came
+weakness. Danger had vanished, and so had our strength. We tottered
+down the lateral moraine in the dark, over boulders and tree trunks,
+through the bushes and devil-club thickets of the grove where we had
+sheltered ourselves in the morning, and across the level mud-slope of
+the terminal moraine. We reached camp about ten o’clock, and found a
+big fire and a big supper. A party of Hoona Indians had visited Mr.
+Young, bringing a gift of porpoise meat and wild strawberries, and
+Hunter Joe had brought in a wild goat. But we lay down, too tired to
+eat much, and soon fell into a troubled sleep. The man who said, “The
+harder the toil, the sweeter the rest,” never was profoundly tired.
+Stickeen kept springing up and muttering in his sleep, no doubt
+dreaming that he was still on the brink of the crevasse; and so did I,
+that night and many others long afterward, when I was overtired.
+
+Thereafter Stickeen was a changed dog. During the rest of the trip,
+instead of holding aloof, he always lay by my side, tried to keep me
+constantly in sight, and would hardly accept a morsel of food, however
+tempting, from any hand but mine. At night, when all was quiet about
+the camp-fire, he would come to me and rest his head on my knee with a
+look of devotion as if I were his god. And often as he caught my eye he
+seemed to be trying to say, “Wasn’t that an awful time we had together
+on the glacier?”
+
+Nothing in after years has dimmed that Alaska storm-day. As I write it
+all comes rushing and roaring to mind as if I were again in the heart
+of it. Again I see the gray flying clouds with their rain-floods and
+snow, the ice-cliffs towering above the shrinking forest, the majestic
+ice-cascade, the vast glacier outspread before its white mountain
+fountains, and in the heart of it the tremendous crevasse,—emblem of
+the valley of the shadow of death,—low clouds trailing over it, the
+snow falling into it; and on its brink I see little Stickeen, and I
+hear his cries for help and his shouts of joy. I have known many dogs,
+and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none
+do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least
+known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all.
+Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as
+through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy
+into all my fellow mortals.
+
+None of Stickeen’s friends knows what finally became of him. After my
+work for the season was done I departed for California, and I never saw
+the dear little fellow again. In reply to anxious inquiries his master
+wrote me that in the summer of 1883 he was stolen by a tourist at Fort
+Wrangel and taken away on a steamer. His fate is wrapped in mystery.
+Doubtless he has left this world—crossed the last crevasse—and gone to
+another. But he will not be forgotten. To me Stickeen is immortal.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STICKEEN ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stickeen, by John Muir</title>
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Stickeen, by John Muir</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Stickeen</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: John Muir</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 22, 2004 [eBook #11673]<br />
+[Most recently updated: July 15, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Audrey Longhurst and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STICKEEN ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>Stickeen</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by John Muir</h2>
+
+<h4>1909</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center">
+TO<br />
+<big>HELEN MUIR</big><br />
+<br />
+Lover of wildness<br />
+this icy storm-story<br />
+is affectionately<br />
+dedicated
+</p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="center">
+TO MY DOG BLANCO<br/>
+BY J.G. HOLLAND
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+My dear dumb friend, low lying there,<br/>
+    A willing vassal at my feet;<br/>
+Glad partner of my home and fare,<br/>
+    My shadow in the street;<br/><br/>
+I look into your great brown eyes,<br/>
+    Where love and loyal homage shine,<br/>
+And wonder where the difference lies<br/>
+    Between your soul and mine!
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+ . . . . . . . <br/><br/>
+I scan the whole broad earth around<br/>
+    For that one heart which, leal and true,<br/>
+Bears friendship without end or bound,<br/>
+    And find the prize in you.
+</p>
+<p class="letter">
+ . . . . . . . <br/><br/>
+Ah, Blanco! did I worship God<br/>
+    As truly as you worship me,<br/>
+Or follow where my Master trod<br/>
+    With your humility:<br/><br/>
+Did I sit fondly at His feet<br/>
+    As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,<br/>
+And watch Him with a love as sweet,<br/>
+    My life would grow divine!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>STICKEEN</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the summer of 1880 I set out from Fort Wrangel in a canoe to continue the
+exploration of the icy region of southeastern Alaska, begun in the fall of
+1879. After the necessary provisions, blankets, etc., had been collected and
+stowed away, and my Indian crew were in their places ready to start, while a
+crowd of their relatives and friends on the wharf were bidding them good-by and
+good-luck, my companion, the Rev. S.H. Young, for whom we were waiting, at last
+came aboard, followed by a little black dog, that immediately made himself at
+home by curling up in a hollow among the baggage. I like dogs, but this one
+seemed so small and worthless that I objected to his going, and asked the
+missionary why he was taking him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Such a little helpless creature will only be in the way,&rdquo; I said;
+&ldquo;you had better pass him up to the Indian boys on the wharf, to be taken
+home to play with the children. This trip is not likely to be good for
+toy-dogs. The poor silly thing will be in rain and snow for weeks or months,
+and will require care like a baby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But his master assured me that he would be no trouble at all; that he was a
+perfect wonder of a dog, could endure cold and hunger like a bear, swim like a
+seal, and was wondrous wise and cunning, etc., making out a list of virtues to
+show he might be the most interesting member of the party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody could hope to unravel the lines of his ancestry. In all the wonderfully
+mixed and varied dog-tribe I never saw any creature very much like him, though
+in some of his sly, soft, gliding motions and gestures he brought the fox to
+mind. He was short-legged and bunchy-bodied, and his hair, though smooth, was
+long and silky and slightly waved, so that when the wind was at his back it
+ruffled, making him look shaggy. At first sight his only noticeable feature was
+his fine tail, which was about as airy and shady as a squirrel&rsquo;s, and was
+carried curling forward almost to his nose. On closer inspection you might
+notice his thin sensitive ears, and sharp eyes with cunning tan-spots above
+them. Mr. Young told me that when the little fellow was a pup about the size of
+a woodrat he was presented to his wife by an Irish prospector at Sitka, and
+that on his arrival at Fort Wrangel he was adopted with enthusiasm by the
+Stickeen Indians as a sort of new good-luck totem, was named
+&ldquo;Stickeen&rdquo; for the tribe, and became a universal favorite; petted,
+protected, and admired wherever he went, and regarded as a mysterious fountain
+of wisdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On our trip he soon proved himself a queer character&mdash;odd, concealed,
+independent, keeping invincibly quiet, and doing many little puzzling things
+that piqued my curiosity. As we sailed week after week through the long
+intricate channels and inlets among the innumerable islands and mountains of
+the coast, he spent most of the dull days in sluggish ease, motionless, and
+apparently as unobserving as if in deep sleep. But I discovered that somehow he
+always knew what was going on. When the Indians were about to shoot at ducks or
+seals, or when anything along the shore was exciting our attention, he would
+rest his chin on the edge of the canoe and calmly look out like a dreamy-eyed
+tourist. And when he heard us talking about making a landing, he immediately
+roused himself to see what sort of a place we were coming to, and made ready to
+jump overboard and swim ashore as soon as the canoe neared the beach. Then,
+with a vigorous shake to get rid of the brine in his hair, he ran into the
+woods to hunt small game. But though always the first out of the canoe, he was
+always the last to get into it. When we were ready to start he could never be
+found, and refused to come to our call. We soon found out, however, that though
+we could not see him at such times, he saw us, and from the cover of the briers
+and huckleberry bushes in the fringe of the woods was watching the canoe with
+wary eye. For as soon as we were fairly off he came trotting down the beach,
+plunged into the surf, and swam after us, knowing well that we would cease
+rowing and take him in. When the contrary little vagabond came alongside, he
+was lifted by the neck, held at arm&rsquo;s length a moment to drip, and
+dropped aboard. We tried to cure him of this trick by compelling him to swim a
+long way, as if we had a mind to abandon him; but this did no good: the longer
+the swim the better he seemed to like it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though capable of great idleness, he never failed to be ready for all sorts of
+adventures and excursions. One pitch-dark rainy night we landed about ten
+o&rsquo;clock at the mouth of a salmon stream when the water was
+phosphorescent. The salmon were running, and the myriad fins of the onrushing
+multitude were churning all the stream into a silvery glow, wonderfully
+beautiful and impressive in the ebon darkness. To get a good view of the show I
+set out with one of the Indians and sailed up through the midst of it to the
+foot of a rapid about half a mile from camp, where the swift current dashing
+over rocks made the luminous glow most glorious. Happening to look back down
+the stream, while the Indian was catching a few of the struggling fish, I saw a
+long spreading fan of light like the tail of a comet, which we thought must be
+made by some big strange animal that was pursuing us. On it came with its
+magnificent train, until we imagined we could see the monster&rsquo;s head and
+eyes; but it was only Stickeen, who, finding I had left the camp, came swimming
+after me to see what was up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we camped early, the best hunter of the crew usually went to the woods for
+a deer, and Stickeen was sure to be at his heels, provided I had not gone out.
+For, strange to say, though I never carried a gun, he always followed me,
+forsaking the hunter and even his master to share my wanderings. The days that
+were too stormy for sailing I spent in the woods, or on the adjacent mountains,
+wherever my studies called me; and Stickeen always insisted on going with me,
+however wild the weather, gliding like a fox through dripping huckleberry
+bushes and thorny tangles of panax and rubus, scarce stirring their rain-laden
+leaves; wading and wallowing through snow, swimming icy streams, skipping over
+logs and rocks and the crevasses of glaciers with the patience and endurance of
+a determined mountaineer, never tiring or getting discouraged. Once he followed
+me over a glacier the surface of which was so crusty and rough that it cut his
+feet until every step was marked with blood; but he trotted on with Indian
+fortitude until I noticed his red track, and, taking pity on him, made him a
+set of moccasins out of a handkerchief. However great his troubles he never
+asked help or made any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he had learned
+that without hard work and suffering there could be no pleasure worth having.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet none of us was able to make out what Stickeen was really good for. He
+seemed to meet danger and hardships without anything like reason, insisted on
+having his own way, never obeyed an order, and the hunter could never set him
+on anything, or make him fetch the birds he shot. His equanimity was so steady
+it seemed due to want of feeling; ordinary storms were pleasures to him, and as
+for mere rain, he flourished in it like a vegetable. No matter what advances
+you might make, scarce a glance or a tail-wag would you get for your pains. But
+though he was apparently as cold as a glacier and about as impervious to fun, I
+tried hard to make his acquaintance, guessing there must be something worth
+while hidden beneath so much courage, endurance, and love of wild-weathery
+adventure. No superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old in office surpassed
+this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes reminded me of a small,
+squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never displayed a single trace of the
+merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the terriers and collies that we all know, nor of
+their touching affection and devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be
+loved and allowed to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to
+be let alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor of his
+hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature. His strength of character
+lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills, and as young, and as wild. I
+never tired of looking into them: it was like looking into a landscape; but
+they were small and rather deep-set, and had no explaining lines around them to
+give out particulars. I was accustomed to look into the faces of plants and
+animals, and I watched the little sphinx more and more keenly as an interesting
+study. But there is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in
+our lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it is
+through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made perfect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After exploring the Sumdum and Tahkoo fiords and their glaciers, we sailed
+through Stephen&rsquo;s Passage into Lynn Canal and thence through Icy Strait
+into Cross Sound, searching for unexplored inlets leading toward the great
+fountain ice-fields of the Fairweather Range. Here, while the tide was in our
+favor, we were accompanied by a fleet of icebergs drifting out to the ocean
+from Glacier Bay. Slowly we paddled around Vancouver&rsquo;s Point, Wimbledon,
+our frail canoe tossed like a feather on the massive heaving swells coming in
+past Cape Spenser. For miles the sound is bounded by precipitous mural cliffs,
+which, lashed with wave-spray and their heads hidden in clouds, looked terribly
+threatening and stern. Had our canoe been crushed or upset we could have made
+no landing here, for the cliffs, as high as those of Yosemite, sink sheer into
+deep water. Eagerly we scanned the wall on the north side for the first sign of
+an opening fiord or harbor, all of us anxious except Stickeen, who dozed in
+peace or gazed dreamily at the tremendous precipices when he heard us talking
+about them. At length we made the joyful discovery of the mouth of the inlet
+now called &ldquo;Taylor Bay,&rdquo; and about five o&rsquo;clock reached the
+head of it and encamped in a spruce grove near the front of a large glacier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While camp was being made, Joe the hunter climbed the mountain wall on the east
+side of the fiord in pursuit of wild goats, while Mr. Young and I went to the
+glacier. We found that it is separated from the waters of the inlet by a
+tide-washed moraine, and extends, an abrupt barrier, all the way across from
+wall to wall of the inlet, a distance of about three miles. But our most
+interesting discovery was that it had recently advanced, though again slightly
+receding. A portion of the terminal moraine had been plowed up and shoved
+forward, uprooting and overwhelming the woods on the east side. Many of the
+trees were down and buried, or nearly so, others were leaning away from the
+ice-cliffs, ready to fall, and some stood erect, with the bottom of the ice
+plow still beneath their roots and its lofty crystal spires towering high above
+their tops. The spectacle presented by these century-old trees standing close
+beside a spiry wall of ice, with their branches almost touching it, was most
+novel and striking. And when I climbed around the front, and a little way up
+the west side of the glacier, I found that it had swelled and increased in
+height and width in accordance with its advance, and carried away the outer
+ranks of trees on its bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On our way back to camp after these first observations I planned a far-and-wide
+excursion for the morrow. I awoke early, called not only by the glacier, which
+had been on my mind all night, but by a grand flood-storm. The wind was blowing
+a gale from the north and the rain was flying with the clouds in a wide
+passionate horizontal flood, as if it were all passing over the country instead
+of falling on it. The main perennial streams were booming high above their
+banks, and hundreds of new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty
+gray walls of the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a
+cup of coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when
+I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of
+Nature&rsquo;s finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful to
+keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing
+in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and chanting with the old
+Norsemen, &ldquo;The blast of the tempest aids our oars, the hurricane is our
+servant and drives us whither we wish to go.&rdquo; So, omitting breakfast, I
+put a piece of bread in my pocket and hurried away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Young and the Indians were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen; but I had
+not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in the tent and came boring
+through the blast after me. That a man should welcome storms for their
+exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God making landscapes, is
+reasonable enough; but what fascination could there be in such tremendous
+weather for a dog? Surely nothing akin to human enthusiasm for scenery or
+geology. Anyhow, on he came, breakfastless, through the choking blast. I
+stopped and did my best to turn him back. &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; I
+said, shouting to make myself heard in the storm, &ldquo;now don&rsquo;t,
+Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle now? You must be daft. This wild
+day has nothing for you. There is no game abroad, nothing but weather. Go back
+to camp and keep warm, get a good breakfast with your master, and be sensible
+for once. I can&rsquo;t carry you all day or feed you, and this storm will kill
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Nature, it seems, was at the bottom of the affair, and she gains her ends
+with dogs as well as with men, making us do as she likes, shoving and pulling
+us along her ways, however rough, all but killing us at times in getting her
+lessons driven hard home. After I had stopped again and again, shouting good
+warning advice, I saw that he was not to be shaken off; as well might the earth
+try to shake off the moon. I had once led his master into trouble, when he fell
+on one of the topmost jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm; now the turn
+of his humble companion was coming. The pitiful little wanderer just stood
+there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, &ldquo;Where thou
+goest I will go.&rdquo; So at last I told him to come on if he must, and gave
+him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket; then we struggled on together, and
+thus began the most memorable of all my wild days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The level flood, driving hard in our faces, thrashed and washed us wildly until
+we got into the shelter of a grove on the east side of the glacier near the
+front, where we stopped awhile for breath and to listen and look out. The
+exploration of the glacier was my main object, but the wind was too high to
+allow excursions over its open surface, where one might be dangerously shoved
+while balancing for a jump on the brink of a crevasse. In the mean time the
+storm was a fine study. Here the end of the glacier, descending an abrupt swell
+of resisting rock about five hundred feet high, leans forward and falls in ice
+cascades. And as the storm came down the glacier from the north, Stickeen and I
+were beneath the main current of the blast, while favorably located to see and
+hear it. What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the smell of the
+washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small voices of the storm!
+Detached wafts and swirls were coming through the woods, with music from the
+leaves and branches and furrowed boles, and even from the splintered rocks and
+ice-crags overhead, many of the tones soft and low and flute-like, as if each
+leaf and tree, crag and spire were a tuned reed. A broad torrent, draining the
+side of the glacier, now swollen by scores of new streams from the mountains,
+was rolling boulders along its rocky channel, with thudding, bumping, muffled
+sounds, rushing towards the bay with tremendous energy, as if in haste to get
+out of the mountains; the waters above and beneath calling to each other, and
+all to the ocean, their home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking southward from our shelter, we had this great torrent and the forested
+mountain wall above it on our left, the spiry ice-crags on our right, and
+smooth gray gloom ahead. I tried to draw the marvelous scene in my note-book,
+but the rain blurred the page in spite of all my pains to shelter it, and the
+sketch was almost worthless. When the wind began to abate, I traced the east
+side of the glacier. All the trees standing on the edge of the woods were
+barked and bruised, showing high-ice mark in a very telling way, while tens of
+thousands of those that had stood for centuries on the bank of the glacier
+farther out lay crushed and being crushed. In many places I could see down
+fifty feet or so beneath the margin of the glacier-mill, where trunks from one
+to two feet in diameter were being ground to pulp against outstanding rock-ribs
+and bosses of the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About three miles above the front of the glacier I climbed to the surface of it
+by means of axe-steps made easy for Stickeen. As far as the eye could reach,
+the level, or nearly level, glacier stretched away indefinitely beneath the
+gray sky, a seemingly boundless prairie of ice. The rain continued, and grew
+colder, which I did not mind, but a dim snowy look in the drooping clouds made
+me hesitate about venturing far from land. No trace of the west shore was
+visible, and in case the clouds should settle and give snow, or the wind again
+become violent, I feared getting caught in a tangle of crevasses.
+Snow-crystals, the flowers of the mountain clouds, are frail, beautiful things,
+but terrible when flying on storm-winds in darkening, benumbing swarms or when
+welded together into glaciers full of deadly crevasses. Watching the weather, I
+sauntered about on the crystal sea. For a mile or two out I found the ice
+remarkably safe. The marginal crevasses were mostly narrow, while the few wider
+ones were easily avoided by passing around them, and the clouds began to open
+here and there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus encouraged, I at last pushed out for the other side; for Nature can make
+us do anything she likes. At first we made rapid progress, and the sky was not
+very threatening, while I took bearings occasionally with a pocket compass to
+enable me to find my way back more surely in case the storm should become
+blinding; but the structure lines of the glacier were my main guide. Toward the
+west side we came to a closely crevassed section in which we had to make long,
+narrow tacks and doublings, tracing the edges of tremendous transverse and
+longitudinal crevasses, many of which were from twenty to thirty feet wide, and
+perhaps a thousand feet deep&mdash;beautiful and awful. In working a way
+through them I was severely cautious, but Stickeen came on as unhesitating as
+the flying clouds. The widest crevasse that I could jump he would leap without
+so much as halting to take a look at it. The weather was now making quick
+changes, scattering bits of dazzling brightness through the wintry gloom; at
+rare intervals, when the sun broke forth wholly free, 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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 blocks, suggesting the wildest updashing, heaving, plunging motion of
+a great river cataract. Tracing it down three or four miles, I found that it
+discharged into a lake, filling it with icebergs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I would gladly have followed the lake outlet to tide-water, but the day was
+already far spent, and the threatening sky called for haste on the return trip
+to get off the ice before dark. I decided therefore to go no farther, and,
+after taking a general view of the wonderful region, turned back, hoping to see
+it again under more favorable auspices. We made good speed up the ca&ntilde;on
+of the great ice-torrent, and out on the main glacier until we had left the
+west shore about two miles behind us. Here we got into a difficult network of
+crevasses, the gathering clouds began to drop misty fringes, and soon the
+dreaded snow came flying thick and fast. I now began to feel anxious about
+finding a way in the blurring storm. Stickeen showed no trace of fear. He was
+still the same silent, able little hero. I noticed, however, that after the
+storm-darkness came on he kept close up behind me. The snow urged us to make
+still greater haste, but at the same time hid our way. I pushed on as best I
+could, jumping innumerable crevasses, and for every hundred rods or so of
+direct advance traveling a mile in doubling up and down in the turmoil of
+chasms and dislocated ice-blocks. After an hour or two of this work we came to
+a series of longitudinal crevasses of appalling width, and almost straight and
+regular in trend, like immense furrows. These I traced with firm nerve, excited
+and strengthened by the danger, making wide jumps, poising cautiously on their
+dizzy edges after cutting hollows for my feet before making the spring, to
+avoid possible slipping or any uncertainty on the farther sides, where only one
+trial is granted&mdash;exercise at once frightful and inspiring. Stickeen
+followed seemingly without effort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many a mile we thus traveled, mostly up and down, making but little real
+headway in crossing, running instead of walking most of the time as the danger
+of being compelled to spend the night on the glacier became threatening.
+Stickeen seemed able for anything. Doubtless we could have weathered the storm
+for one night, dancing on a flat spot to keep from freezing, and I faced the
+threat without feeling anything like despair; but we were hungry and wet, and
+the wind from the mountains was still thick with snow and bitterly cold, so of
+course that night would have seemed a very long one. I could not see far enough
+through the blurring snow to judge in which general direction the least
+dangerous route lay, while the few dim, momentary glimpses I caught of
+mountains through rifts in the flying clouds were far from encouraging either
+as weather signs or as guides. I had simply to grope my way from crevasse to
+crevasse, holding a general direction by the ice-structure, which was not to be
+seen everywhere, and partly by the wind. Again and again I was put to my
+mettle, but Stickeen followed easily, his nerve apparently growing more
+unflinching as the danger increased. So it always is with mountaineers when
+hard beset. Running hard and jumping, holding every minute of the remaining
+daylight, poor as it was, precious, we doggedly persevered and tried to hope
+that every difficult crevasse we overcame would prove to be the last of its
+kind. But on the contrary, as we advanced they became more deadly trying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length our way was barred by a very wide and straight crevasse, which I
+traced rapidly northward a mile or so without finding a crossing or hope of
+one; then down the glacier about as far, to where it united with another
+uncrossable crevasse. In all this distance of perhaps two miles there was only
+one place where I could possibly jump it, but the width of this jump was the
+utmost I dared attempt, while the danger of slipping on the farther side was so
+great that I was loath to try it. Furthermore, the side I was on was about a
+foot higher than the other, and even with this advantage the crevasse seemed
+dangerously wide. One is liable to underestimate the width of crevasses where
+the magnitudes in general are great, I therefore stared at this one mighty
+keenly, estimating its width and the shape of the edge on the farther side,
+until I thought that I could jump it if necessary, but that in case I should be
+compelled to jump back from the lower side I might fail. Now, a cautious
+mountaineer seldom takes a step on unknown ground which seems at all dangerous
+that he cannot retrace in case he should be stopped by unseen obstacles ahead.
+This is the rule of mountaineers who live long, and, though in haste, I
+compelled myself to sit down and calmly deliberate before I broke it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Retracing my devious path in imagination as if it were drawn on a chart, I saw
+that I was recrossing the glacier a mile or two farther up stream than the
+course pursued in the morning, and that I was now entangled in a section I had
+not before seen. Should I risk this dangerous jump, or try to regain the woods
+on the west shore, make a fire, and have only hunger to endure while waiting
+for a new day? I had already crossed so broad a stretch of dangerous ice that I
+saw it would be difficult to get back to the woods through the storm, before
+dark, and the attempt would most likely result in a dismal night-dance on the
+glacier; while just beyond the present barrier the surface seemed more
+promising, and the east shore was now perhaps about as near as the west. I was
+therefore eager to go on. But this wide jump was a dreadful obstacle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At length, because of the dangers already behind me, I determined to venture
+against those that might be ahead, jumped and landed well, but with so little
+to spare that I more than ever dreaded being compelled to take that jump back
+from the lower side. Stickeen followed, making nothing of it, and we ran
+eagerly forward, hoping we were leaving all our troubles behind. But within the
+distance of a few hundred yards we were stopped by the widest crevasse yet
+encountered. Of course I made haste to explore it, hoping all might yet be
+remedied by finding a bridge or a way around either end. About three-fourths of
+a mile upstream I found that it united with the one we had just crossed, as I
+feared it would. Then, tracing it down, I found it joined the same crevasse at
+the lower end also, maintaining throughout its whole course a width of forty to
+fifty feet. Thus to my dismay I discovered that we were on a narrow island
+about two miles long, with two barely possible ways of escape: one back by the
+way we came, the other ahead by an almost inaccessible sliver-bridge that
+crossed the great crevasse from near the middle of it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this nerve-trying discovery I ran back to the sliver-bridge and
+cautiously examined it. Crevasses, caused by strains from variations in the
+rate of motion of different parts of the glacier and convexities in the
+channel, are mere cracks when they first open, so narrow as hardly to admit the
+blade of a pocket-knife, and gradually widen according to the extent of the
+strain and the depth of the glacier. Now some of these cracks are interrupted,
+like the cracks in wood, and in opening, the strip of ice between overlapping
+ends is dragged out, and may maintain a continuous connection between the
+sides, just as the two sides of a slivered crack in wood that is being split
+are connected. Some crevasses remain open for months or even years, and by the
+melting of their sides continue to increase in width long after the opening
+strain has ceased; while the sliver-bridges, level on top at first and
+perfectly safe, are at length melted to thin, vertical, knife-edged blades, the
+upper portion being most exposed to the weather; and since the exposure is
+greatest in the middle, they at length curve downward like the cables of
+suspension bridges. This one was evidently very old, for it had been weathered
+and wasted until it was the most dangerous and inaccessible that ever lay in my
+way. The width of the crevasse was here about fifty feet, and the sliver
+crossing diagonally was about seventy feet long; its thin knife-edge near the
+middle was depressed twenty-five or thirty feet below the level of the glacier,
+and the upcurving ends were attached to the sides eight or ten feet below the
+brink. Getting down the nearly vertical wall to the end of the sliver and up
+the other side were the main difficulties, and they seemed all but
+insurmountable. Of the many perils encountered in my years of wandering on
+mountains and glaciers none seemed so plain and stern and merciless as this.
+And it was presented when we were wet to the skin and hungry, the sky dark with
+quick driving snow, and the night near. But we were forced to face it. It was a
+tremendous necessity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beginning, not immediately above the sunken end of the bridge, but a little to
+one side, I cut a deep hollow on the brink for my knees to rest in. Then,
+leaning over, with my short-handled axe I cut a step sixteen or eighteen inches
+below, which on account of the sheerness of the wall was necessarily shallow.
+That step, however, was well made; its floor sloped slightly inward and formed
+a good hold for my heels. Then, slipping cautiously upon it, and crouching as
+low as possible, with my left side toward the wall, I steadied myself against
+the wind with my left hand in a slight notch, while with the right I cut other
+similar steps and notches in succession, guarding against losing balance by
+glinting of the axe, or by wind-gusts, for life and death were in every stroke
+and in the niceness of finish of every foothold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the end of the bridge was reached I chipped it down until I had made a
+level platform six or eight inches wide, and it was a trying thing to poise on
+this little slippery platform while bending over to get safely astride of the
+sliver. Crossing was then comparatively easy by chipping off the sharp edge
+with short, careful strokes, and hitching forward an inch or two at a time,
+keeping my balance with my knees pressed against the sides. The tremendous
+abyss on either hand I studiously ignored. To me the edge of that blue sliver
+was then all the world. But the most trying part of the adventure, after
+working my way across inch by inch and chipping another small platform, was to
+rise from the safe position astride and to cut a step-ladder in the nearly
+vertical face of the wall,&mdash;chipping, climbing, holding on with feet and
+fingers in mere notches. At such times one&rsquo;s whole body is eye, and
+common skill and fortitude are replaced by power beyond our call or knowledge.
+Never before had I been so long under deadly strain. How I got up that cliff I
+never could tell. The thing seemed to have been done by somebody else. I never
+have held death in contempt, though in the course of my explorations I have
+oftentimes felt that to meet one&rsquo;s fate on a noble mountain, or in the
+heart of a glacier, would be blessed as compared with death from disease, or
+from some shabby lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure,
+set so glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel
+gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But poor Stickeen, the wee, hairy, sleekit beastie, think of him! When I had
+decided to dare the bridge, and while I was on my knees chipping a hollow on
+the rounded brow above it, he came behind me, pushed his head past my shoulder,
+looked down and across, scanned the sliver and its approaches with his
+mysterious eyes, then looked me in the face with a startled air of surprise and
+concern, and began to mutter and whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with
+words, &ldquo;Surely, you are not going into that awful place.&rdquo; This was
+the first time I had seen him gaze deliberately into a crevasse, or into my
+face with an eager, speaking, troubled look. That he should have recognized and
+appreciated the danger at the first glance showed wonderful sagacity. Never
+before had the daring midget seemed to know that ice was slippery or that there
+was any such thing as danger anywhere. His looks and tones of voice when he
+began to complain and speak his fears were so human that I unconsciously talked
+to him in sympathy as I would to a frightened boy, and in trying to calm his
+fears perhaps in some measure moderated my own. &ldquo;Hush your fears, my
+boy,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we will get across safe, though it is not going to
+be easy. No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our lives to
+save them. At the worst we can only slip, and then how grand a grave we will
+have, and by and by our nice bones will do good in the terminal moraine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But my sermon was far from reassuring him: he began to cry, and after taking
+another piercing look at the tremendous gulf, ran away in desperate excitement,
+seeking some other crossing. By the time he got back, baffled of course, I had
+made a step or two. I dared not look back, but he made himself heard; and when
+he saw that I was certainly bent on crossing he cried aloud in despair. The
+danger was enough to daunt anybody, but it seems wonderful that he should have
+been able to weigh and appreciate it so justly. No mountaineer could have seen
+it more quickly or judged it more wisely, discriminating between real and
+apparent peril.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever, and after running
+back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would return to the brink
+of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and wailing as if in the bitterness
+of death. Could this be the silent, philosophic Stickeen? I shouted
+encouragement, telling him the bridge was not so bad as it looked, that I had
+left it flat and safe for his feet, and he could walk it easily. But he was
+afraid to try. Strange so small an animal should be capable of such big, wise
+fears. I called again and again in a reassuring tone to come on and fear
+nothing; that he could come if he would only try. He would hush for a moment,
+look down again at the bridge, and shout his unshakable conviction that he
+could never, never come that way; then lie back in despair, as if howling,
+&ldquo;O-o-oh! what a place! No-o-o, I can never go-o-o down there!&rdquo; His
+natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous storm of
+fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed ridiculous. But
+in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of death, and his heartrending
+cries might well have called Heaven to his help. Perhaps they did. So hidden
+before, he was now transparent, and one could see the workings of his heart and
+mind like the movements of a clock out of its case. His voice and gestures,
+hopes and fears, were so perfectly human that none could mistake them; while he
+seemed to understand every word of mine. I was troubled at the thought of
+having to leave him out all night, and of the danger of not finding him in the
+morning. It seemed impossible to get him to venture. To compel him to try
+through fear of being abandoned, I started off as if leaving him to his fate,
+and disappeared back of a hummock; but this did no good; he only lay down and
+moaned in utter hopeless misery. So, after hiding a few minutes, I went back to
+the brink of the crevasse and in a severe tone of voice shouted across to him
+that now I must certainly leave him, I could wait no longer, and that, if he
+would not come, all I could promise was that I would return to seek him next
+day. I warned him that if he went back to the woods the wolves would kill him,
+and finished by urging him once more by words and gestures to come on, come on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew very well what I meant, and at last, with the courage of despair,
+hushed and breathless, he crouched down on the brink in the hollow I had made
+for my knees, pressed his body against the ice as if trying to get the
+advantage of the friction of every hair, gazed into the first step, put his
+little feet together and slid them slowly, slowly over the edge and down into
+it, bunching all four in it and almost standing on his head. Then, without
+lifting his feet, as well as I could see through the snow, he slowly worked
+them over the edge of the step and down into the next and the next in
+succession in the same way, and gained the end of the bridge. Then, lifting his
+feet with the regularity and slowness of the vibrations of a seconds pendulum,
+as if counting and measuring <em>one-two-three</em>, holding himself steady
+against the gusty wind, and giving separate attention to each little step, he
+gained the foot of the cliff, while I was on my knees leaning over to give him
+a lift should he succeed in getting within reach of my arm. Here he halted in
+dead silence, and it was here I feared he might fail, for dogs are poor
+climbers. I had no cord. If I had had one, I would have dropped a noose over
+his head and hauled him up. But while I was thinking whether an available cord
+might be made out of clothing, he was looking keenly into the series of notched
+steps and finger-holds I had made, as if counting them, and fixing the position
+of each one of them in his mind. Then suddenly up he came in a springy rush,
+hooking his paws into the steps and notches so quickly that I could not see how
+it was done, and whizzed past my head, safe at last!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now came a scene! &ldquo;Well done, well done, little boy! Brave
+boy!&rdquo; I cried, trying to catch and caress him; but he would not be
+caught. Never before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a
+revulsion from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant, uncontrollable
+joy. He flashed and darted hither and thither as if fairly demented, screaming
+and shouting, swirling round and round in giddy loops and circles like a leaf
+in a whirlwind, lying down, and rolling over and over, sidewise and heels over
+head, and pouring forth a tumultuous flood of hysterical cries and sobs and
+gasping mutterings. When I ran up to him to shake him, fearing he might die of
+joy, he flashed off two or three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion;
+then, turning suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself at my
+face, almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and screaming and
+shouting as if saying, &ldquo;Saved! saved! saved!&rdquo; Then away again,
+dropping suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling and fairly
+sobbing. Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him. Moses&rsquo; stately
+song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red Sea was nothing to it.
+Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull, enduring little fellow for all
+that most stirs this mortal frame? Nobody could have helped crying with him!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy. So I ran
+ahead, calling him in as gruff a voice as I could command to come on and stop
+his nonsense, for we had far to go and it would soon be dark. Neither of us
+feared another trial like this. Heaven would surely count one enough for a
+lifetime. The ice ahead was gashed by thousands of crevasses, but they were
+common ones. The joy of deliverance burned in us like fire, and we ran without
+fatigue, every muscle with immense rebound glorying in its strength. Stickeen
+flew across everything in his way, and not till dark did he settle into his
+normal fox-like trot. At last the cloudy mountains came in sight, and we soon
+felt the solid rock beneath our feet, and were safe. Then came weakness. Danger
+had vanished, and so had our strength. We tottered down the lateral moraine in
+the dark, over boulders and tree trunks, through the bushes and devil-club
+thickets of the grove where we had sheltered ourselves in the morning, and
+across the level mud-slope of the terminal moraine. We reached camp about ten
+o&rsquo;clock, and found a big fire and a big supper. A party of Hoona Indians
+had visited Mr. Young, bringing a gift of porpoise meat and wild strawberries,
+and Hunter Joe had brought in a wild goat. But we lay down, too tired to eat
+much, and soon fell into a troubled sleep. The man who said, &ldquo;The harder
+the toil, the sweeter the rest,&rdquo; never was profoundly tired. Stickeen
+kept springing up and muttering in his sleep, no doubt dreaming that he was
+still on the brink of the crevasse; and so did I, that night and many others
+long afterward, when I was overtired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereafter Stickeen was a changed dog. During the rest of the trip, instead of
+holding aloof, he always lay by my side, tried to keep me constantly in sight,
+and would hardly accept a morsel of food, however tempting, from any hand but
+mine. At night, when all was quiet about the camp-fire, he would come to me and
+rest his head on my knee with a look of devotion as if I were his god. And
+often as he caught my eye he seemed to be trying to say, &ldquo;Wasn&rsquo;t
+that an awful time we had together on the glacier?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Nothing in after years has dimmed that Alaska storm-day. As I write it all
+comes rushing and roaring to mind as if I were again in the heart of it. Again
+I see the gray flying clouds with their rain-floods and snow, the ice-cliffs
+towering above the shrinking forest, the majestic ice-cascade, the vast glacier
+outspread before its white mountain fountains, and in the heart of it the
+tremendous crevasse,&mdash;emblem of the valley of the shadow of
+death,&mdash;low clouds trailing over it, the snow falling into it; and on its
+brink I see little Stickeen, and I hear his cries for help and his shouts of
+joy. I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and
+devotion; but to none do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least
+promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known
+of them all. Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as
+through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all
+my fellow mortals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None of Stickeen&rsquo;s friends knows what finally became of him. After my
+work for the season was done I departed for California, and I never saw the
+dear little fellow again. In reply to anxious inquiries his master wrote me
+that in the summer of 1883 he was stolen by a tourist at Fort Wrangel and taken
+away on a steamer. His fate is wrapped in mystery. Doubtless he has left this
+world&mdash;crossed the last crevasse&mdash;and gone to another. But he will
+not be forgotten. To me Stickeen is immortal.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stickeen, by John Muir
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Stickeen
+
+Author: John Muir
+
+Release Date: March 22, 2004 [EBook #11673]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STICKEEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+              STICKEEN
+
+                 BY
+              JOHN MUIR
+
+
+
+
+                1909
+
+
+
+
+                 TO
+             HELEN MUIR
+
+          _Lover of wildness
+           this icy storm-story
+           is affectionately
+           dedicated_
+
+
+
+
+            TO MY DOG BLANCO
+
+            BY J.G. HOLLAND
+
+    My dear dumb friend, low lying there,
+      A willing vassal at my feet;
+    Glad partner of my home and fare,
+      My shadow in the street;
+
+    I look into your great brown eyes,
+      Where love and loyal homage shine,
+    And wonder where the difference lies
+      Between your soul and mine!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    I scan the whole broad earth around
+      For that one heart which, leal and true,
+    Bears friendship without end or bound,
+      And find the prize in you.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Ah, Blanco! did I worship God
+      As truly as you worship me,
+    Or follow where my Master trod
+      With your humility:
+
+    Did I sit fondly at His feet
+      As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,
+    And watch Him with a love as sweet,
+      My life would grow divine!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+STICKEEN
+
+
+In the summer of 1880 I set out from Fort Wrangel in a canoe to continue
+the exploration of the icy region of southeastern Alaska, begun in the
+fall of 1879. After the necessary provisions, blankets, etc., had been
+collected and stowed away, and my Indian crew were in their places ready
+to start, while a crowd of their relatives and friends on the wharf were
+bidding them good-by and good-luck, my companion, the Rev. S.H. Young,
+for whom we were waiting, at last came aboard, followed by a little
+black dog, that immediately made himself at home by curling up in a
+hollow among the baggage. I like dogs, but this one seemed so small and
+worthless that I objected to his going, and asked the missionary why he
+was taking him.
+
+"Such a little helpless creature will only be in the way," I said; "you
+had better pass him up to the Indian boys on the wharf, to be taken home
+to play with the children. This trip is not likely to be good for
+toy-dogs. The poor silly thing will be in rain and snow for weeks or
+months, and will require care like a baby."
+
+But his master assured me that he would be no trouble at all; that he
+was a perfect wonder of a dog, could endure cold and hunger like a bear,
+swim like a seal, and was wondrous wise and cunning, etc., making out a
+list of virtues to show he might be the most interesting member of the
+party.
+
+Nobody could hope to unravel the lines of his ancestry. In all the
+wonderfully mixed and varied dog-tribe I never saw any creature very
+much like him, though in some of his sly, soft, gliding motions and
+gestures he brought the fox to mind. He was short-legged and
+bunchy-bodied, and his hair, though smooth, was long and silky and
+slightly waved, so that when the wind was at his back it ruffled,
+making him look shaggy. At first sight his only noticeable feature was
+his fine tail, which was about as airy and shady as a squirrel's, and
+was carried curling forward almost to his nose. On closer inspection you
+might notice his thin sensitive ears, and sharp eyes with cunning
+tan-spots above them. Mr. Young told me that when the little fellow was
+a pup about the size of a woodrat he was presented to his wife by an
+Irish prospector at Sitka, and that on his arrival at Fort Wrangel he
+was adopted with enthusiasm by the Stickeen Indians as a sort of new
+good-luck totem, was named "Stickeen" for the tribe, and became a
+universal favorite; petted, protected, and admired wherever he went, and
+regarded as a mysterious fountain of wisdom.
+
+On our trip he soon proved himself a queer character--odd, concealed,
+independent, keeping invincibly quiet, and doing many little puzzling
+things that piqued my curiosity. As we sailed week after week through
+the long intricate channels and inlets among the innumerable islands and
+mountains of the coast, he spent most of the dull days in sluggish ease,
+motionless, and apparently as unobserving as if in deep sleep. But I
+discovered that somehow he always knew what was going on. When the
+Indians were about to shoot at ducks or seals, or when anything along
+the shore was exciting our attention, he would rest his chin on the edge
+of the canoe and calmly look out like a dreamy-eyed tourist. And when he
+heard us talking about making a landing, he immediately roused himself
+to see what sort of a place we were coming to, and made ready to jump
+overboard and swim ashore as soon as the canoe neared the beach. Then,
+with a vigorous shake to get rid of the brine in his hair, he ran into
+the woods to hunt small game. But though always the first out of the
+canoe, he was always the last to get into it. When we were ready to
+start he could never be found, and refused to come to our call. We soon
+found out, however, that though we could not see him at such times, he
+saw us, and from the cover of the briers and huckleberry bushes in the
+fringe of the woods was watching the canoe with wary eye. For as soon as
+we were fairly off he came trotting down the beach, plunged into the
+surf, and swam after us, knowing well that we would cease rowing and
+take him in. When the contrary little vagabond came alongside, he was
+lifted by the neck, held at arm's length a moment to drip, and dropped
+aboard. We tried to cure him of this trick by compelling him to swim a
+long way, as if we had a mind to abandon him; but this did no good: the
+longer the swim the better he seemed to like it.
+
+Though capable of great idleness, he never failed to be ready for all
+sorts of adventures and excursions. One pitch-dark rainy night we landed
+about ten o'clock at the mouth of a salmon stream when the water was
+phosphorescent. The salmon were running, and the myriad fins of the
+onrushing multitude were churning all the stream into a silvery glow,
+wonderfully beautiful and impressive in the ebon darkness. To get a
+good view of the show I set out with one of the Indians and sailed up
+through the midst of it to the foot of a rapid about half a mile from
+camp, where the swift current dashing over rocks made the luminous glow
+most glorious. Happening to look back down the stream, while the Indian
+was catching a few of the struggling fish, I saw a long spreading fan of
+light like the tail of a comet, which we thought must be made by some
+big strange animal that was pursuing us. On it came with its magnificent
+train, until we imagined we could see the monster's head and eyes; but
+it was only Stickeen, who, finding I had left the camp, came swimming
+after me to see what was up.
+
+When we camped early, the best hunter of the crew usually went to the
+woods for a deer, and Stickeen was sure to be at his heels, provided I
+had not gone out. For, strange to say, though I never carried a gun, he
+always followed me, forsaking the hunter and even his master to share my
+wanderings. The days that were too stormy for sailing I spent in the
+woods, or on the adjacent mountains, wherever my studies called me; and
+Stickeen always insisted on going with me, however wild the weather,
+gliding like a fox through dripping huckleberry bushes and thorny
+tangles of panax and rubus, scarce stirring their rain-laden leaves;
+wading and wallowing through snow, swimming icy streams, skipping over
+logs and rocks and the crevasses of glaciers with the patience and
+endurance of a determined mountaineer, never tiring or getting
+discouraged. Once he followed me over a glacier the surface of which was
+so crusty and rough that it cut his feet until every step was marked
+with blood; but he trotted on with Indian fortitude until I noticed his
+red track, and, taking pity on him, made him a set of moccasins out of a
+handkerchief. However great his troubles he never asked help or made
+any complaint, as if, like a philosopher, he had learned that without
+hard work and suffering there could be no pleasure worth having.
+
+Yet none of us was able to make out what Stickeen was really good for.
+He seemed to meet danger and hardships without anything like reason,
+insisted on having his own way, never obeyed an order, and the hunter
+could never set him on anything, or make him fetch the birds he shot.
+His equanimity was so steady it seemed due to want of feeling; ordinary
+storms were pleasures to him, and as for mere rain, he flourished in it
+like a vegetable. No matter what advances you might make, scarce a
+glance or a tail-wag would you get for your pains. But though he was
+apparently as cold as a glacier and about as impervious to fun, I tried
+hard to make his acquaintance, guessing there must be something worth
+while hidden beneath so much courage, endurance, and love of
+wild-weathery adventure. No superannuated mastiff or bulldog grown old
+in office surpassed this fluffy midget in stoic dignity. He sometimes
+reminded me of a small, squat, unshakable desert cactus. For he never
+displayed a single trace of the merry, tricksy, elfish fun of the
+terriers and collies that we all know, nor of their touching affection
+and devotion. Like children, most small dogs beg to be loved and allowed
+to love; but Stickeen seemed a very Diogenes, asking only to be let
+alone: a true child of the wilderness, holding the even tenor of his
+hidden life with the silence and serenity of nature. His strength of
+character lay in his eyes. They looked as old as the hills, and as
+young, and as wild. I never tired of looking into them: it was like
+looking into a landscape; but they were small and rather deep-set, and
+had no explaining lines around them to give out particulars. I was
+accustomed to look into the faces of plants and animals, and I watched
+the little sphinx more and more keenly as an interesting study. But
+there is no estimating the wit and wisdom concealed and latent in our
+lower fellow mortals until made manifest by profound experiences; for it
+is through suffering that dogs as well as saints are developed and made
+perfect.
+
+After exploring the Sumdum and Tahkoo fiords and their glaciers, we
+sailed through Stephen's Passage into Lynn Canal and thence through Icy
+Strait into Cross Sound, searching for unexplored inlets leading toward
+the great fountain ice-fields of the Fairweather Range. Here, while the
+tide was in our favor, we were accompanied by a fleet of icebergs
+drifting out to the ocean from Glacier Bay. Slowly we paddled around
+Vancouver's Point, Wimbledon, our frail canoe tossed like a feather on
+the massive heaving swells coming in past Cape Spenser. For miles the
+sound is bounded by precipitous mural cliffs, which, lashed with
+wave-spray and their heads hidden in clouds, looked terribly threatening
+and stern. Had our canoe been crushed or upset we could have made no
+landing here, for the cliffs, as high as those of Yosemite, sink sheer
+into deep water. Eagerly we scanned the wall on the north side for the
+first sign of an opening fiord or harbor, all of us anxious except
+Stickeen, who dozed in peace or gazed dreamily at the tremendous
+precipices when he heard us talking about them. At length we made the
+joyful discovery of the mouth of the inlet now called "Taylor Bay," and
+about five o'clock reached the head of it and encamped in a spruce grove
+near the front of a large glacier.
+
+While camp was being made, Joe the hunter climbed the mountain wall on
+the east side of the fiord in pursuit of wild goats, while Mr. Young and
+I went to the glacier. We found that it is separated from the waters of
+the inlet by a tide-washed moraine, and extends, an abrupt barrier, all
+the way across from wall to wall of the inlet, a distance of about three
+miles. But our most interesting discovery was that it had recently
+advanced, though again slightly receding. A portion of the terminal
+moraine had been plowed up and shoved forward, uprooting and
+overwhelming the woods on the east side. Many of the trees were down and
+buried, or nearly so, others were leaning away from the ice-cliffs,
+ready to fall, and some stood erect, with the bottom of the ice plow
+still beneath their roots and its lofty crystal spires towering high
+above their tops. The spectacle presented by these century-old trees
+standing close beside a spiry wall of ice, with their branches almost
+touching it, was most novel and striking. And when I climbed around the
+front, and a little way up the west side of the glacier, I found that it
+had swelled and increased in height and width in accordance with its
+advance, and carried away the outer ranks of trees on its bank.
+
+On our way back to camp after these first observations I planned a
+far-and-wide excursion for the morrow. I awoke early, called not only by
+the glacier, which had been on my mind all night, but by a grand
+flood-storm. The wind was blowing a gale from the north and the rain
+was flying with the clouds in a wide passionate horizontal flood, as if
+it were all passing over the country instead of falling on it. The main
+perennial streams were booming high above their banks, and hundreds of
+new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty gray walls of
+the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a cup of
+coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when
+I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of
+Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful
+to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them,
+rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and
+chanting with the old Norsemen, "The blast of the tempest aids our oars,
+the hurricane is our servant and drives us whither we wish to go." So,
+omitting breakfast, I put a piece of bread in my pocket and hurried
+away.
+
+Mr. Young and the Indians were asleep, and so, I hoped, was Stickeen;
+but I had not gone a dozen rods before he left his bed in the tent and
+came boring through the blast after me. That a man should welcome
+storms for their exhilarating music and motion, and go forth to see God
+making landscapes, is reasonable enough; but what fascination could
+there be in such tremendous weather for a dog? Surely nothing akin to
+human enthusiasm for scenery or geology. Anyhow, on he came,
+breakfastless, through the choking blast. I stopped and did my best to
+turn him back. "Now don't," I said, shouting to make myself heard in the
+storm, "now don't, Stickeen. What has got into your queer noddle now?
+You must be daft. This wild day has nothing for you. There is no game
+abroad, nothing but weather. Go back to camp and keep warm, get a good
+breakfast with your master, and be sensible for once. I can't carry you
+all day or feed you, and this storm will kill you."
+
+But Nature, it seems, was at the bottom of the affair, and she gains her
+ends with dogs as well as with men, making us do as she likes, shoving
+and pulling us along her ways, however rough, all but killing us at
+times in getting her lessons driven hard home. After I had stopped again
+and again, shouting good warning advice, I saw that he was not to be
+shaken off; as well might the earth try to shake off the moon. I had
+once led his master into trouble, when he fell on one of the topmost
+jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm; now the turn of his humble
+companion was coming. The pitiful little wanderer just stood there in
+the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, "Where thou goest I
+will go." So at last I told him to come on if he must, and gave him a
+piece of the bread I had in my pocket; then we struggled on together,
+and thus began the most memorable of all my wild days.
+
+The level flood, driving hard in our faces, thrashed and washed us
+wildly until we got into the shelter of a grove on the east side of the
+glacier near the front, where we stopped awhile for breath and to
+listen and look out. The exploration of the glacier was my main object,
+but the wind was too high to allow excursions over its open surface,
+where one might be dangerously shoved while balancing for a jump on the
+brink of a crevasse. In the mean time the storm was a fine study. Here
+the end of the glacier, descending an abrupt swell of resisting rock
+about five hundred feet high, leans forward and falls in ice cascades.
+And as the storm came down the glacier from the north, Stickeen and I
+were beneath the main current of the blast, while favorably located to
+see and hear it. What a psalm the storm was singing, and how fresh the
+smell of the washed earth and leaves, and how sweet the still small
+voices of the storm! Detached wafts and swirls were coming through the
+woods, with music from the leaves and branches and furrowed boles, and
+even from the splintered rocks and ice-crags overhead, many of the tones
+soft and low and flute-like, as if each leaf and tree, crag and spire
+were a tuned reed. A broad torrent, draining the side of the glacier,
+now swollen by scores of new streams from the mountains, was rolling
+boulders along its rocky channel, with thudding, bumping, muffled
+sounds, rushing towards the bay with tremendous energy, as if in haste
+to get out of the mountains; the waters above and beneath calling to
+each other, and all to the ocean, their home.
+
+Looking southward from our shelter, we had this great torrent and the
+forested mountain wall above it on our left, the spiry ice-crags on our
+right, and smooth gray gloom ahead. I tried to draw the marvelous scene
+in my note-book, but the rain blurred the page in spite of all my pains
+to shelter it, and the sketch was almost worthless. When the wind began
+to abate, I traced the east side of the glacier. All the trees standing
+on the edge of the woods were barked and bruised, showing high-ice mark
+in a very telling way, while tens of thousands of those that had stood
+for centuries on the bank of the glacier farther out lay crushed and
+being crushed. In many places I could see down fifty feet or so beneath
+the margin of the glacier-mill, where trunks from one to two feet in
+diameter were being ground to pulp against outstanding rock-ribs and
+bosses of the bank.
+
+About three miles above the front of the glacier I climbed to the
+surface of it by means of axe-steps made easy for Stickeen. As far as
+the eye could reach, the level, or nearly level, glacier stretched away
+indefinitely beneath the gray sky, a seemingly boundless prairie of ice.
+The rain continued, and grew colder, which I did not mind, but a dim
+snowy look in the drooping clouds made me hesitate about venturing far
+from land. No trace of the west shore was visible, and in case the
+clouds should settle and give snow, or the wind again become violent, I
+feared getting caught in a tangle of crevasses. Snow-crystals, the
+flowers of the mountain clouds, are frail, beautiful things, but
+terrible when flying on storm-winds in darkening, benumbing swarms or
+when welded together into glaciers full of deadly crevasses. Watching
+the weather, I sauntered about on the crystal sea. For a mile or two out
+I found the ice remarkably safe. The marginal crevasses were mostly
+narrow, while the few wider ones were easily avoided by passing around
+them, and the clouds began to open here and there.
+
+Thus encouraged, I at last pushed out for the other side; for Nature can
+make us do anything she likes. At first we made rapid progress, and the
+sky was not very threatening, while I took bearings occasionally with a
+pocket compass to enable me to find my way back more surely in case the
+storm should become blinding; but the structure lines of the glacier
+were my main guide. Toward the west side we came to a closely crevassed
+section in which we had to make long, narrow tacks and doublings,
+tracing the edges of tremendous transverse and longitudinal crevasses,
+many of which were from twenty to thirty feet wide, and perhaps a
+thousand feet deep--beautiful and awful. In working a way through them I
+was severely cautious, but Stickeen came on as unhesitating as the
+flying clouds. The widest crevasse that I could jump he would leap
+without so much as halting to take a look at it. The weather was now
+making quick changes, scattering bits of dazzling brightness through the
+wintry gloom; at rare intervals, when the sun broke forth wholly free,
+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
+blocks, suggesting the wildest updashing, heaving, plunging motion of a
+great river cataract. Tracing it down three or four miles, I found that
+it discharged into a lake, filling it with icebergs.
+
+I would gladly have followed the lake outlet to tide-water, but the day
+was already far spent, and the threatening sky called for haste on the
+return trip to get off the ice before dark. I decided therefore to go
+no farther, and, after taking a general view of the wonderful region,
+turned back, hoping to see it again under more favorable auspices. We
+made good speed up the ca�on of the great ice-torrent, and out on the
+main glacier until we had left the west shore about two miles behind us.
+Here we got into a difficult network of crevasses, the gathering clouds
+began to drop misty fringes, and soon the dreaded snow came flying thick
+and fast. I now began to feel anxious about finding a way in the
+blurring storm. Stickeen showed no trace of fear. He was still the same
+silent, able little hero. I noticed, however, that after the
+storm-darkness came on he kept close up behind me. The snow urged us to
+make still greater haste, but at the same time hid our way. I pushed on
+as best I could, jumping innumerable crevasses, and for every hundred
+rods or so of direct advance traveling a mile in doubling up and down in
+the turmoil of chasms and dislocated ice-blocks. After an hour or two of
+this work we came to a series of longitudinal crevasses of appalling
+width, and almost straight and regular in trend, like immense furrows.
+These I traced with firm nerve, excited and strengthened by the danger,
+making wide jumps, poising cautiously on their dizzy edges after
+cutting hollows for my feet before making the spring, to avoid possible
+slipping or any uncertainty on the farther sides, where only one trial
+is granted--exercise at once frightful and inspiring. Stickeen followed
+seemingly without effort.
+
+Many a mile we thus traveled, mostly up and down, making but little real
+headway in crossing, running instead of walking most of the time as the
+danger of being compelled to spend the night on the glacier became
+threatening. Stickeen seemed able for anything. Doubtless we could have
+weathered the storm for one night, dancing on a flat spot to keep from
+freezing, and I faced the threat without feeling anything like despair;
+but we were hungry and wet, and the wind from the mountains was still
+thick with snow and bitterly cold, so of course that night would have
+seemed a very long one. I could not see far enough through the blurring
+snow to judge in which general direction the least dangerous route lay,
+while the few dim, momentary glimpses I caught of mountains through
+rifts in the flying clouds were far from encouraging either as weather
+signs or as guides. I had simply to grope my way from crevasse to
+crevasse, holding a general direction by the ice-structure, which was
+not to be seen everywhere, and partly by the wind. Again and again I was
+put to my mettle, but Stickeen followed easily, his nerve apparently
+growing more unflinching as the danger increased. So it always is with
+mountaineers when hard beset. Running hard and jumping, holding every
+minute of the remaining daylight, poor as it was, precious, we doggedly
+persevered and tried to hope that every difficult crevasse we overcame
+would prove to be the last of its kind. But on the contrary, as we
+advanced they became more deadly trying.
+
+At length our way was barred by a very wide and straight crevasse, which
+I traced rapidly northward a mile or so without finding a crossing or
+hope of one; then down the glacier about as far, to where it united with
+another uncrossable crevasse. In all this distance of perhaps two miles
+there was only one place where I could possibly jump it, but the width
+of this jump was the utmost I dared attempt, while the danger of
+slipping on the farther side was so great that I was loath to try it.
+Furthermore, the side I was on was about a foot higher than the other,
+and even with this advantage the crevasse seemed dangerously wide. One
+is liable to underestimate the width of crevasses where the magnitudes
+in general are great, I therefore stared at this one mighty keenly,
+estimating its width and the shape of the edge on the farther side,
+until I thought that I could jump it if necessary, but that in case I
+should be compelled to jump back from the lower side I might fail. Now,
+a cautious mountaineer seldom takes a step on unknown ground which seems
+at all dangerous that he cannot retrace in case he should be stopped by
+unseen obstacles ahead. This is the rule of mountaineers who live long,
+and, though in haste, I compelled myself to sit down and calmly
+deliberate before I broke it.
+
+Retracing my devious path in imagination as if it were drawn on a chart,
+I saw that I was recrossing the glacier a mile or two farther up stream
+than the course pursued in the morning, and that I was now entangled in
+a section I had not before seen. Should I risk this dangerous jump, or
+try to regain the woods on the west shore, make a fire, and have only
+hunger to endure while waiting for a new day? I had already crossed so
+broad a stretch of dangerous ice that I saw it would be difficult to
+get back to the woods through the storm, before dark, and the attempt
+would most likely result in a dismal night-dance on the glacier; while
+just beyond the present barrier the surface seemed more promising, and
+the east shore was now perhaps about as near as the west. I was
+therefore eager to go on. But this wide jump was a dreadful obstacle.
+
+At length, because of the dangers already behind me, I determined to
+venture against those that might be ahead, jumped and landed well, but
+with so little to spare that I more than ever dreaded being compelled to
+take that jump back from the lower side. Stickeen followed, making
+nothing of it, and we ran eagerly forward, hoping we were leaving all
+our troubles behind. But within the distance of a few hundred yards we
+were stopped by the widest crevasse yet encountered. Of course I made
+haste to explore it, hoping all might yet be remedied by finding a
+bridge or a way around either end. About three-fourths of a mile
+upstream I found that it united with the one we had just crossed, as I
+feared it would. Then, tracing it down, I found it joined the same
+crevasse at the lower end also, maintaining throughout its whole course
+a width of forty to fifty feet. Thus to my dismay I discovered that we
+were on a narrow island about two miles long, with two barely possible
+ways of escape: one back by the way we came, the other ahead by an
+almost inaccessible sliver-bridge that crossed the great crevasse from
+near the middle of it!
+
+After this nerve-trying discovery I ran back to the sliver-bridge and
+cautiously examined it. Crevasses, caused by strains from variations in
+the rate of motion of different parts of the glacier and convexities in
+the channel, are mere cracks when they first open, so narrow as hardly
+to admit the blade of a pocket-knife, and gradually widen according to
+the extent of the strain and the depth of the glacier. Now some of these
+cracks are interrupted, like the cracks in wood, and in opening, the
+strip of ice between overlapping ends is dragged out, and may maintain a
+continuous connection between the sides, just as the two sides of a
+slivered crack in wood that is being split are connected. Some crevasses
+remain open for months or even years, and by the melting of their sides
+continue to increase in width long after the opening strain has ceased;
+while the sliver-bridges, level on top at first and perfectly safe, are
+at length melted to thin, vertical, knife-edged blades, the upper
+portion being most exposed to the weather; and since the exposure is
+greatest in the middle, they at length curve downward like the cables of
+suspension bridges. This one was evidently very old, for it had been
+weathered and wasted until it was the most dangerous and inaccessible
+that ever lay in my way. The width of the crevasse was here about fifty
+feet, and the sliver crossing diagonally was about seventy feet long;
+its thin knife-edge near the middle was depressed twenty-five or thirty
+feet below the level of the glacier, and the upcurving ends were
+attached to the sides eight or ten feet below the brink. Getting down
+the nearly vertical wall to the end of the sliver and up the other side
+were the main difficulties, and they seemed all but insurmountable. Of
+the many perils encountered in my years of wandering on mountains and
+glaciers none seemed so plain and stern and merciless as this. And it
+was presented when we were wet to the skin and hungry, the sky dark with
+quick driving snow, and the night near. But we were forced to face it.
+It was a tremendous necessity.
+
+Beginning, not immediately above the sunken end of the bridge, but a
+little to one side, I cut a deep hollow on the brink for my knees to
+rest in. Then, leaning over, with my short-handled axe I cut a step
+sixteen or eighteen inches below, which on account of the sheerness of
+the wall was necessarily shallow. That step, however, was well made; its
+floor sloped slightly inward and formed a good hold for my heels. Then,
+slipping cautiously upon it, and crouching as low as possible, with my
+left side toward the wall, I steadied myself against the wind with my
+left hand in a slight notch, while with the right I cut other similar
+steps and notches in succession, guarding against losing balance by
+glinting of the axe, or by wind-gusts, for life and death were in every
+stroke and in the niceness of finish of every foothold.
+
+After the end of the bridge was reached I chipped it down until I had
+made a level platform six or eight inches wide, and it was a trying
+thing to poise on this little slippery platform while bending over to
+get safely astride of the sliver. Crossing was then comparatively easy
+by chipping off the sharp edge with short, careful strokes, and hitching
+forward an inch or two at a time, keeping my balance with my knees
+pressed against the sides. The tremendous abyss on either hand I
+studiously ignored. To me the edge of that blue sliver was then all the
+world. But the most trying part of the adventure, after working my way
+across inch by inch and chipping another small platform, was to rise
+from the safe position astride and to cut a step-ladder in the nearly
+vertical face of the wall,--chipping, climbing, holding on with feet and
+fingers in mere notches. At such times one's whole body is eye, and
+common skill and fortitude are replaced by power beyond our call or
+knowledge. Never before had I been so long under deadly strain. How I
+got up that cliff I never could tell. The thing seemed to have been
+done by somebody else. I never have held death in contempt, though in
+the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one's
+fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be blessed
+as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby lowland
+accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so glaringly
+open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel gratefully
+sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.
+
+But poor Stickeen, the wee, hairy, sleekit beastie, think of him! When I
+had decided to dare the bridge, and while I was on my knees chipping a
+hollow on the rounded brow above it, he came behind me, pushed his head
+past my shoulder, looked down and across, scanned the sliver and its
+approaches with his mysterious eyes, then looked me in the face with a
+startled air of surprise and concern, and began to mutter and whine;
+saying as plainly as if speaking with words, "Surely, you are not going
+into that awful place." This was the first time I had seen him gaze
+deliberately into a crevasse, or into my face with an eager, speaking,
+troubled look. That he should have recognized and appreciated the danger
+at the first glance showed wonderful sagacity. Never before had the
+daring midget seemed to know that ice was slippery or that there was any
+such thing as danger anywhere. His looks and tones of voice when he
+began to complain and speak his fears were so human that I unconsciously
+talked to him in sympathy as I would to a frightened boy, and in trying
+to calm his fears perhaps in some measure moderated my own. "Hush your
+fears, my boy," I said, "we will get across safe, though it is not going
+to be easy. No right way is easy in this rough world. We must risk our
+lives to save them. At the worst we can only slip, and then how grand a
+grave we will have, and by and by our nice bones will do good in the
+terminal moraine."
+
+But my sermon was far from reassuring him: he began to cry, and after
+taking another piercing look at the tremendous gulf, ran away in
+desperate excitement, seeking some other crossing. By the time he got
+back, baffled of course, I had made a step or two. I dared not look
+back, but he made himself heard; and when he saw that I was certainly
+bent on crossing he cried aloud in despair. The danger was enough to
+daunt anybody, but it seems wonderful that he should have been able to
+weigh and appreciate it so justly. No mountaineer could have seen it
+more quickly or judged it more wisely, discriminating between real and
+apparent peril.
+
+When I gained the other side, he screamed louder than ever, and after
+running back and forth in vain search for a way of escape, he would
+return to the brink of the crevasse above the bridge, moaning and
+wailing as if in the bitterness of death. Could this be the silent,
+philosophic Stickeen? I shouted encouragement, telling him the bridge
+was not so bad as it looked, that I had left it flat and safe for his
+feet, and he could walk it easily. But he was afraid to try. Strange so
+small an animal should be capable of such big, wise fears. I called
+again and again in a reassuring tone to come on and fear nothing; that
+he could come if he would only try. He would hush for a moment, look
+down again at the bridge, and shout his unshakable conviction that he
+could never, never come that way; then lie back in despair, as if
+howling, "O-o-oh! what a place! No-o-o, I can never go-o-o down there!"
+His natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous
+storm of fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed
+ridiculous. But in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of
+death, and his heartrending cries might well have called Heaven to his
+help. Perhaps they did. So hidden before, he was now transparent, and
+one could see the workings of his heart and mind like the movements of a
+clock out of its case. His voice and gestures, hopes and fears, were so
+perfectly human that none could mistake them; while he seemed to
+understand every word of mine. I was troubled at the thought of having
+to leave him out all night, and of the danger of not finding him in the
+morning. It seemed impossible to get him to venture. To compel him to
+try through fear of being abandoned, I started off as if leaving him to
+his fate, and disappeared back of a hummock; but this did no good; he
+only lay down and moaned in utter hopeless misery. So, after hiding a
+few minutes, I went back to the brink of the crevasse and in a severe
+tone of voice shouted across to him that now I must certainly leave him,
+I could wait no longer, and that, if he would not come, all I could
+promise was that I would return to seek him next day. I warned him that
+if he went back to the woods the wolves would kill him, and finished by
+urging him once more by words and gestures to come on, come on.
+
+He knew very well what I meant, and at last, with the courage of
+despair, hushed and breathless, he crouched down on the brink in the
+hollow I had made for my knees, pressed his body against the ice as if
+trying to get the advantage of the friction of every hair, gazed into
+the first step, put his little feet together and slid them slowly,
+slowly over the edge and down into it, bunching all four in it and
+almost standing on his head. Then, without lifting his feet, as well as
+I could see through the snow, he slowly worked them over the edge of the
+step and down into the next and the next in succession in the same way,
+and gained the end of the bridge. Then, lifting his feet with the
+regularity and slowness of the vibrations of a seconds pendulum, as if
+counting and measuring _one-two-three_, holding himself steady against
+the gusty wind, and giving separate attention to each little step, he
+gained the foot of the cliff, while I was on my knees leaning over to
+give him a lift should he succeed in getting within reach of my arm.
+Here he halted in dead silence, and it was here I feared he might fail,
+for dogs are poor climbers. I had no cord. If I had had one, I would
+have dropped a noose over his head and hauled him up. But while I was
+thinking whether an available cord might be made out of clothing, he was
+looking keenly into the series of notched steps and finger-holds I had
+made, as if counting them, and fixing the position of each one of them
+in his mind. Then suddenly up he came in a springy rush, hooking his
+paws into the steps and notches so quickly that I could not see how it
+was done, and whizzed past my head, safe at last!
+
+And now came a scene! "Well done, well done, little boy! Brave boy!" I
+cried, trying to catch and caress him; but he would not be caught. Never
+before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a revulsion
+from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant, uncontrollable joy.
+He flashed and darted hither and thither as if fairly demented,
+screaming and shouting, swirling round and round in giddy loops and
+circles like a leaf in a whirlwind, lying down, and rolling over and
+over, sidewise and heels over head, and pouring forth a tumultuous flood
+of hysterical cries and sobs and gasping mutterings. When I ran up to
+him to shake him, fearing he might die of joy, he flashed off two or
+three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion; then, turning
+suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself at my face,
+almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and screaming and
+shouting as if saying, "Saved! saved! saved!" Then away again, dropping
+suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling and fairly
+sobbing. Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him. Moses' stately
+song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red Sea was nothing
+to it. Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull, enduring little
+fellow for all that most stirs this mortal frame? Nobody could have
+helped crying with him!
+
+But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy.
+So I ran ahead, calling him in as gruff a voice as I could command to
+come on and stop his nonsense, for we had far to go and it would soon be
+dark. Neither of us feared another trial like this. Heaven would surely
+count one enough for a lifetime. The ice ahead was gashed by thousands
+of crevasses, but they were common ones. The joy of deliverance burned
+in us like fire, and we ran without fatigue, every muscle with immense
+rebound glorying in its strength. Stickeen flew across everything in his
+way, and not till dark did he settle into his normal fox-like trot. At
+last the cloudy mountains came in sight, and we soon felt the solid rock
+beneath our feet, and were safe. Then came weakness. Danger had
+vanished, and so had our strength. We tottered down the lateral moraine
+in the dark, over boulders and tree trunks, through the bushes and
+devil-club thickets of the grove where we had sheltered ourselves in the
+morning, and across the level mud-slope of the terminal moraine. We
+reached camp about ten o'clock, and found a big fire and a big supper. A
+party of Hoona Indians had visited Mr. Young, bringing a gift of
+porpoise meat and wild strawberries, and Hunter Joe had brought in a
+wild goat. But we lay down, too tired to eat much, and soon fell into a
+troubled sleep. The man who said, "The harder the toil, the sweeter the
+rest," never was profoundly tired. Stickeen kept springing up and
+muttering in his sleep, no doubt dreaming that he was still on the brink
+of the crevasse; and so did I, that night and many others long
+afterward, when I was overtired.
+
+Thereafter Stickeen was a changed dog. During the rest of the trip,
+instead of holding aloof, he always lay by my side, tried to keep me
+constantly in sight, and would hardly accept a morsel of food, however
+tempting, from any hand but mine. At night, when all was quiet about the
+camp-fire, he would come to me and rest his head on my knee with a look
+of devotion as if I were his god. And often as he caught my eye he
+seemed to be trying to say, "Wasn't that an awful time we had together
+on the glacier?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nothing in after years has dimmed that Alaska storm-day. As I write it
+all comes rushing and roaring to mind as if I were again in the heart of
+it. Again I see the gray flying clouds with their rain-floods and snow,
+the ice-cliffs towering above the shrinking forest, the majestic
+ice-cascade, the vast glacier outspread before its white mountain
+fountains, and in the heart of it the tremendous crevasse,--emblem of
+the valley of the shadow of death,--low clouds trailing over it, the
+snow falling into it; and on its brink I see little Stickeen, and I hear
+his cries for help and his shouts of joy. I have known many dogs, and
+many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none do I
+owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least known
+of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all. Our
+storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as through a
+window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all my
+fellow mortals.
+
+None of Stickeen's friends knows what finally became of him. After my
+work for the season was done I departed for California, and I never saw
+the dear little fellow again. In reply to anxious inquiries his master
+wrote me that in the summer of 1883 he was stolen by a tourist at Fort
+Wrangel and taken away on a steamer. His fate is wrapped in mystery.
+Doubtless he has left this world--crossed the last crevasse--and gone
+to another. But he will not be forgotten. To me Stickeen is
+immortal.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Stickeen, by John Muir
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