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.
Early on the morning of August 2, all necessary preparations having been made the day previous, we started in the direction of the great snow peak to be seen at the head of the Marvine glacier, where we hoped to find a pass leading through the mountains which would enable us to reach the foot of Mount St. Elias or to discover a practicable way across the main range into the unknown country toward the north.
All of the camp hands were with us at the start, except Stamy and White, who had been despatched to Port Mulgrave to purchase shoes. All but Crumback and Lindsley were to return to Blossom island, however, after leaving their loads at a rendezvous as far from Blossom island as could be reached in a day and allow sufficient time to return to the base-camp. Kerr and myself, with the two camp hands mentioned, were to press on to the snow-fields above. We took with us a tent, blankets, rations, an oil-stove, and a supply of coal oil, and felt equal to any emergency that might arise.
The morning of our departure was thick and foggy, with occasional showers, and the weather grew worse instead of better as we advanced. All the mountains were soon shut out from view by the vast vapor banks that settled down from above, and we had little except the general character of the glacier to guide us.
Our way at first led up the eastern border of the Marvine glacier, over seemingly interminable fields of angular débris. Traveling on the rugged moraine, some idea of which may be obtained from plate 17, was not only tiresome in the extreme, but ruinous to boots and shoes. On passing the mouth of the first lateral gorge (about a mile from Blossom island), from which flows a secondary glacier, we could look up the bed of the steep ravine to the white precipices beyond, which seemed to descend out of the clouds, and were scarred by avalanches; but all of the higher peaks were shrouded from view. At noon we passed the mouth of a second and larger gorge, which discharges an important tributary. We then left the border of the glacier and traveled up its center, the crevasses at the embouchures of the tributary stream being too numerous and too wide to be crossed without great difficulty.
