Fortune has her cycles, whether for good or ill. The Kansas, having
run the gauntlet of many dangers, seemed to have earned an approving
smile from the fickle goddess. A slight but perceptible veering of the
wind, combined with the increasing power of the sun's rays, swept the
ocean clear of its storm-wraiths. Soon after passing the pillar rock,
Courtenay thought he could make out the unwavering outline of
mountainous land amid the gray mists. A few minutes later the waves
racing alongside changed their leaden hue to a steely glitter which
told him the fog was dispersing. The nearer blue of the ocean carpet
spread an ever-widening circle until it merged into a vivid green.
Then, with startling suddenness, the curtain was drawn aside on a
panorama at once magnificent and amazing.
Almost without warning, the ship was found to be entering the estuary
of a narrow fiord. Gaunt headlands, carved on Titanic scale out of the
solid rock, guarded the entrance, and already shut out the more distant
coast-line. Behind these first massive walls, everywhere unscalable,
and rising in separate promontories to altitudes of, perhaps, four
hundred feet, an inner fortification of precipitous mountains flung
their glacier-clad peaks heavenward to immense heights,--heights which,
in that region, soared far above the snow-line. The sun was reflected
with dazzling brilliancy from their icy summits, and wonderful lights
sparkled in rainbow tints on their slopes. Delicate pink deepened to
rose crimson; pale greens softened into the beryl blue of stupendous
glaciers, vast frozen cataracts which flowed down deep and broad clefts
almost to the water's edge.
Above these color-bands, the dead-white mantle of everlasting snow
spread its folds, with here and there a black ridge of granite
thrusting wind-cleared fangs high above the far-flung shroud. But, if
the crests of peak upon peak were thus clothed in white, their bases
wore a garment of different texture. Save on the seaward terraces of
stark rock, with their tide-marked base of weed-covered boulders, the
densest vegetation known to mankind imposed everywhere a first barrier
to human progress far more unconquerable than the awesome regions
beyond. Pine forests of extraordinary density crammed each available
yard of space, until the tree-growth yielded perforce to hardier Alpine
moss and lichens.
This lower belt of deepest green ranged from five
hundred to one thousand feet in height, as conditions were adverse or
favorable; waterfalls abounded; each tiny glen held its foaming
rivulet, rushing madly down the steep, or leaping in fine cascades from
one rocky escarpment to another. Courtenay, after an astounded glance
at the magnitude and solemn grandeur of the spectacle, had eyes for
naught save the conformation of the channel. The change in the wind
was caused, he found, by the northerly headland thrusting its giant
mass a mile, or more, westward of its twin; but he quickly discovered,
from the conformation of the land, that the latter was really the
protecting cape of the inner water-way. He reasoned, therefore, that
the deep-water channel flowed close to the northern shore until it was
flung off by the relentless rocks to seek the easier inlet behind the
opposite point.