July 26th

Still rain, tho' not very hard. Shingling continues. York has been helping in this work and it seems to have make him dissatisfied with cooking; we may lose him when the steamer arrives. Further calculation on the motion of the ice yields a result surprisingly at variance with Prof. Wright's. We only find our middle stakes moving about 6 ft a day. Prof. Muir had concluded that the motion could not be more than 10 ft a day. Prof. Wright's error must be due to the means at his disposal and to his mistaking one pinnacle for another.

This afternoon Adams and I took the boat and sailed over to station I, as the rain has stopped. We took the Plane table and made a map of the ice-front at water line. The second was M. As we sailed back I kept watching the glacier front so as to notice the changed appearance of the points sighted on as seen from the direction of M. I was thus able to recognize nearly all the points. Those that I missed some about the middle of the glacier on account [of] a rain which came on while I was working at M, and made them invisible. The drawing shows that the general shape of the ice front is slightly concave, with various sinuosities and projecting points, but with nothing resembling the great middle point of Prof. Wright.

I unfortunately left the lens of my camera at home, but Morse has rigged up one of his lenses, (just like mine) to fit my camera; he has also fited [fitted?] up a box as a dark room, so I think we shall be able to get some good photographs and develop them here.

Morse has proved very handy, and is the most energetic and useful man in the party; and the most reliable. The ridge pole of our tent has bent somewhat, so we have put a truss under it to strengthen it.