"Travels in Alaska 



fear of falling stones. A few small ones are rattling 

 down the steep slope. I must go to bed. 



July 15. I climbed the dome to plan a way, scan 

 the glacier, and take bearings, etc., in case of storms. 

 The main divide is about fifteen hundred feet; the 

 second divide, about fifteen hundred also, is about 

 one and one half miles southeastward. The flow of 

 water on the glacier noticeably diminished last night 

 though there was no frost. It is now already increas- 

 ing. Stones begin to roll into the crevasses and into 

 new positions, sliding against each other, half turning 

 over or falling on moraine ridges. Mud pellets with 

 small pebbles slip and roll slowly from ice-hummocks 

 again and again. How often and by how many ways 

 are boulders finished and finally brought to anything 

 like permanent form and place in beds for farms and 

 fields, forests and gardens. Into crevasses and out 

 again, into moraines, shifted and reinforced and re- 

 formed by avalanches, melting from pedestals, etc. 

 Rain, frost, and dew help in the work; they are swept 

 in rills, caught and ground in pot-hole mills. Moraines 

 of washed pebbles, like those on glacier margins, are 

 formed by snow avalanches deposited in crevasses, 

 then weathered out and projected on the ice as shallow 

 raised moraines. There is one such at this camp. 



A ptarmigan is on a rock twenty yards distant, as 

 if on show. It has red over the eye, a white line, not 

 conspicuous, over the red, belly white, white mark- 

 ings over the upper parts on ground of brown and 

 black wings, mostly white as seen when flying, but 



[ 298 ] 



