Taku Inlet
and the
Taku Glaciers
By: Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore (1896)
Taku Inlet extends extends 18 miles in a N. E. direction
from Stephen's Passage, widening to a basin where the Taku River, a tide-water,
and an Alpine glacier dischrge their floods.
It is one of the show places on the Alaska coast, and is
reguarly visited by excursion steamers. The Taku Glacier was christened
the Schulze Glacier in 1883, in honour of Paul Schulze, of Tacoma,
and in 1891 was renamed the Foster Glacier, in honour of the then
Secretary of the Treasury; but locally to geologists, tourists and navigators
it remains Taku. The native Name is Sitth Klunu Gutta, "the
spirits' home." It is Sitth too Yehk's, the ice spirit's, very palace of
delight, and the fabled man-faced seals with their human hands live and
frolic in its clear blue grottoes and crystal dells. the ice-stream, a
mile in width, fills its canons from wall to wall, and is squarely broken
front rises from 100 to 200 ft. above the water. It is one of the purest
and cleanest glaciers, without medial or apparent lateral moraines, and
deeply fissered and crevassed for the 5 miles of its course which is visable
from the water. Because of its purity, ships prefer to fill their ice-boxes
in this basin, and the process of lassoing the icebergs and hoisting them
on board is an interesting feature in ship life.
On the north shore of the inlet there is a large glacier
of the Swiss type, two ice-streams joining and sweeping in a broad fan
slope to a terminal moraine, and the sandy level is cut by many watercourses
and covered with beds of crimson epilobium. A landing is sometimes made,
and tourists are given opportunity to visit the glacier, which the natives
call Sitth Kadischle, the Spaniards' Glacier. The Kadischle was
christened the Norris Glacier in 1886, for Dr. Basil Norris,
U. S. A., and in 1891 was named the Windom Glacier, in honour of
the late Secretary of the Treasury. To tourists and scientists it
is most commonly known as the Norris. it is more broken than either the
Mer de Glace or the Aletsch Glacier, and is six times the width of the
former and three times the width of the latter at the last gateway,
where it spreads out into the great rounded front.
Scource: Sidmore, Eliza Ruhamah. Appletons' Guide-Book to Alaska,
New York:
D. Appleton and Company, 1896, 80-81
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