ie 
1901] Churchill,— A Botanical Excursion to Mt. Katahdin. 157 
Wednesday, July rir, we were more fortunate. We got away 
early, followed the brook as before, but left it and ascended to the 
Saddle by way of the Slide, which was on the whole easier than 
working and climbing through the rocks and scrub on the adjoining 
ledges and slopes. From this point, the top of the west wall of the 
Basin, the ascent is wonderfully easy. The great Tableland stretches 
away to North and South, very irregularly bounded by the various 
ravines and precipitous slopes, and often covered with loose rocks 
and boulders, but rising very gradually to the two peaks. 
We were soon widely scattered over this lawn, looking at the 
grand view and trying to name the various lakes and mountains which 
made up the panorama, and collecting a few grasses and other 
plants; but we finally got together at the stone cairn at the top about 
midday. We were here more than 2000 feet higher than our camp, 
whose location we could readily discern ; and according to the most 
accurate survey, 5215 feet above sea level. It was then clear, 
though clouds were beginning to drive in from the West, and the view 
in all directions was very beautiful. The numerous large lakes, and 
the rivers, too, whose courses were easily traced, gave a variety to the 
landscape which is wholly wanting in the view from the summit of 
Washington. 
. Here at the cairn, marking this summit, ends the great mountain 
plain, up which we had comfortably walked, and the end is very 
abrupt. Looking East, we are close to the ragged edge of the fear- 
ful precipices which fall hundreds of feet to the little lake at our 
camp below. Turning but a quarter-circle to the South, the drop 
was almost as abrupt; save that between the two descents is the 
dizzy path which leads down and along the narrow ridge over the Chim- 
ney to Pomola, here making off from the mountain, first to the East 
and then at a sharp angle to the North; embracing, as I have said, 
the South Basin in its great curve. It was a scene of desolation! 
Were it not that the granitic formation forbade that conclusion, we 
might think ourselves on the ragged edge of the crater of an extinct 
volcano. The rocks were broken and disintegrated.’ The cliff 
‘Prof. R. S. Tarr, in his paper on “Glaciation of Mount Ktaadn, Maine” 
(Bull. Geol. Soc. Am. xi. 441), compares these steep walls, only recently exposed 
to the fierce action of frost, water and wind, with similar steep valleys in Green- 
land, in which glaciers now exist, and from this and other significant evidence he 
concludes that these Katahdin Basins were until recently the beds of local 
glaciers. 
mio Pear 
