720 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



rocky walls, and often lead into narrower ocean 

 defiles penetrating, one knows not whither, 

 into the deeper heart of these great mountain 

 masses. 



These were weeks of exquisite delight to 

 Agassiz. The vessel often skirted the shore 

 so closely that its geology could be studied 

 from the deck. The rounded shoulders of 

 the mountains, in marked contrast to their 

 peaked and jagged crests, the general charac- 

 ter of the snow-fields and glaciers, not crowded 

 into narrow valleys as in Switzerland, but 

 spread out on the open slopes of the loftier 

 ranges, or, dome like, capping their summits, 

 all this afforded data for comparison with 

 his past experience, and with the knowledge 

 he had accumulated upon like phenomena in 

 other regions. Here, as in the Alps, the 

 abrupt line, where the rounded and worn sur- 

 faces of the mountains (moutonnees, as the 

 Swiss say) yield to their sharply cut, jagged 

 crests, showed him the ancient and highest 

 line reached by the glacial action. The long, 

 serrated edge of Mount Tarn, for instance, is 

 like a gigantic saw, while the lower shoulders 

 of the mass are hummocked into a succession 

 of rounded hills. In like manner the two 

 beautiful valleys, separated by a bold bluff 



