| FIGURE 2—View of a glacial Lakelet (drawn from a Photograph). |
| FIGURE 3—Section of a glacial lakelet. |
Beyond the bordering moraines at our feet, we can look far out over the ice-plateau and view hundreds of square miles of its frozen surface. At the same time we obtain glimpses of other vast ice-fields toward the west, beyond Icy bay; but their limits in that direction are unknown.
Later in the season I made an excursion far out on the Malaspina glacier from the extreme southern end of the Hitchcock range, and became acquainted with many of its peculiarities. Its surface, instead of being a smooth snow-field, as it appears from a distance, is roughened by thousands of crevasses, many of which are filled with clear, blue water. Over hundreds of square miles the surface appears as if a giant plow had passed over it, leaving the ice furrowed with crevasses. The crevasses are not broad; usually one can cross them at a bound. They appear to be the scars left by rents in the tributary ice-streams.
The stillness far out on the great ice-field is immediately noticed by one who has recently traversed the sloping surfaces of the tributary glaciers. It is always silent on that vast frozen plateau. There are no surface streams and no lakes; not a rill murmurs along its channel of ice; no cascades are formed by streams plunging into moulins and crevasses. The water produced by the melting of the ice finds its way down into the glacier and perhaps to its bottom, and must there form rivers of large size; but no indications of their existence can be obtained at the surface. The icy surface is undulating, and resembles in some respects the great rolling prairies of the west; it is a prairie of ice. In the central portion not a shoot of vegetation casts its shadow, and scarcely a fragment of rock can be found. The boundaries of the vast plateau have never been surveyed, but its area cannot be less than five hundred square miles. The clear ice of the center greatly exceeds the extent of the moraine-covered borders. It has a general elevation of fifteen or sixteen hundred feet, being highest near the end of the Hitchcock range, where the Seward glacier comes in, and decreasing from there in all directions. From the summit of Blossom island and other commanding stations it is evident that the dark moraine belts about its borders are compound and record a varied history. Far away toward the southeast the individual elements may be distinguished. The dark bands of débris sweep around in great curves and concentric, swirl-like figures, which indicate that there are complicated currents in the seemingly motionless plateau.
The Malaspina glacier belongs to a class of ice bodies not previously recognized, which are formed at the bases of mountains by the union of several glaciers from above. Their position suggests the name of Piedmont glaciers for the type. They differ from continental glaciers in the fact that they are formed by the union of ice-streams and are not the sources from which ice-streams flow. The supply from the tributary glacier is counterbalanced by melting and evaporation.
If the reader has become interested in the vast ice-fields about Blossom island, he may wish to continue our acquaintance and go with me into the great snow-fields on the higher mountains, where the ice-rivers feeding the Malaspina glacier have their sources.
LIFE ABOVE THE SNOW-LINE.