And it really is because the sun is so bright that the hat is tipped. Moreover it is because of the sunshine that the man takes a stroll. If, after more days of sunshine, we return we see the same stone further down the slope of the glacier and apparently standing on the same leg.
"But does he or it actually walk on that leg?"
(The audience, who at first thought I was joking, had begun to believe I was in earnest.)
Yes, that leg and others. Before this Alpine tourist ends his travels down to the valleys below he may have, all told, as many legs as a centipede, but only one at a time. Like the legs of the amœba and the claws of the crab they are renewed as wanted. A big stone falling from the mountain side upon a glacier protects the ice beneath from the sun's rays, so, as the ice melts down around it, the stone is left standing on a pillar. These "glacier tables" (to use the scientific term) are formed on the south sides of glaciers where there is the most sun. Owing to the slant of the rays the rock is heated most on the south end and so tips in that direction more and more. Finally it falls off and, in so doing, pitches farther down the slope. Then a new pillar is formed and the whole process is gone through again.
(If we should get lost up here any one of these snow men will tell us the way out. The snow man's hat, for the reason stated, always tips toward the south.)
The stones of the winter lands are not only like human beings in the fact that they walk, but like little human beings in the fact that when they are small they can't. In one of the pictures I drew for the boys and girls—that representing the ice pillar from which the stone has slipped—you may be able to make out a little pebble. It got a ride because it was hiding under the big stone. Left to itself "it wouldn't have a leg to stand on," as the saying goes, for small stones are heated through by the sun and so sink down into the ice and form no "legs."
From a photograph copyrighted by Merl La Voy
THE RUSH OF THE AVALANCHE
It's seldom you can get a snap-shot at an avalanche—it's so sudden! Then, when you do get one you must be an expert or your picture will be a blur. This picture was taken by Merl La Voy. An interesting thing about it is that the scene is on Mount McKinley, which, as your geography will tell you, is the highest mountain in North America. The avalanche started near the top, where the greatest fields of loose snow lie. We see it in the act of plunging into a vast crevasse several miles below, and sending up clouds of snow. They look like steam.