30 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



glass. The crater was extinct, no signs of steam or of recent 

 eruptions meeting tlie eye. We were told that on the summit of 

 the cone there is a hot-steam vent, the last dying embers of past 

 volcanic action. Mr. Sissons, while guiding a traveler to the sum- 

 mit, was once belated and had to spend the night there, and saved 

 the lives of himself and his companion by lying close to the steam 

 vent, the steam passing up through the snow. On their descent 

 they slid down over the snow fields of the summit to the lava beds 

 below. 



The outlet of the crater, or point of overflow at the last erup- 

 tion, was on the western side, where small masses of black obsid- 

 ian and white incrustations of lime were observed. 



Turning away from this wonderful view, we walked over the 

 snow and down the loose rocky sides to a rock overlooking the 

 Whitney Glacier. This ice stream, which stretched uphill past 

 the crater to its source, is about three miles long, and on the north 

 side of the mountain, at a point about 13,500 feet high, it heads in 

 a snow field, or tner-de- glace, which is continuous with the head of 

 the McCloud Glacier. Toward the top a large mass of lava pro- 

 jects above the surface of the ice, which is white and very clear 

 near the top ; but below this point the glacier is much discolored, 

 more so than any Alpine glacier I have seen. Owing to the steep 

 and imeven pitch of the rocky bed, the surface of the ice, espe- 

 cially near the upper end of the glacier " cascades," or breaks into 

 needles, being rent by numerous crevasses. On each side is a 

 well-marked lateral moraine, with its steejDest side next to the 

 overhanging wall of lava; the moraine on the western side be- 

 gins much lower down. The one on the east side ends in three 

 ridges of dirt and rock, the two uniting to form the great termi- 

 nal moraine, and, looking far down the glacial stream, this mo- 

 raine was seen to pass under the ice, or rather the ice overrode it, 

 since the glacier was seen here and there to project above it. 

 Large bowlders or blocks of lava were scattered over it, and its 

 surface was very uneven, with irregular mounds of debris and 

 deep pit-holelike hollows or basins between them. The terminal 

 moraine was overlooked by a small volcano or monticule perhaps 

 a thousand feet high, with nine or ten crater cones rising from 

 its sides a beautiful example, and reminding me, as I remember 

 them, of the monticules on the flanks of Mount Etna. 



At and beyond the end of the present terminal moraine 

 stretches away in the distance a number of old moraines, naked 

 and bare as when they were born, forming plains and overlooked 

 by well-wooded hills. A rapid stream with a white bed runs 

 from the end of the glacier in a northerly direction into Shasta 

 Valley, and at night it is not frozen. 



On the northeastern side near the end of the glacier are three 



