No. 1.] DAWSON — GLACIATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 37 



tion occurring, the beds of the glaciers were left as hollows to 

 become lakes. Whether any of these are true rock-basins can 

 not be determined, as the material flooring the lower portions of 

 the wide valleys is altogether detrital. A moraine appears to lie 

 across the valley at the lower end of Little Shuswap Lake. 



Explorations along the coast of British Columbia, and more 

 especially in the Queen Charlotte Islands, during the past sum- 

 mer, have developed additional interesting details bearing on the 

 glacial period. These have not yet been worked up, but the 

 main points are as follows. The great glacier which filled the 

 Strait of Georgia, overriding the south-eastern extremity of 

 Vancouver Island, may be attributed with greatest probability 

 tr the earlier and more intense period of glaciation. Its motion 

 was from north to south, but whether this indicated a general 

 glaciation of the coast in that direction, or was due entirely to 

 the contour of the laud, was not known. It was evident that had 

 any polar ice-cap or southward-moving glaciating ridge of ice been 

 the agent, it must also have followed the wide sound separating 

 the north-western end of Vancouver Island from the mainland, 

 in a south-eastward direction. This has not occurred, but, on 

 the contrary, a glacier equally massive with that of the Strait of 

 Georgia has poured out of this sound north-westward, sweeping 

 over the northern portion of Vancouver and adjacent islands. 

 From a point nearly opposite the middle of Vancouver Island, 

 where the channels separating it from the continental shore are 

 most contracted, the ice has flowed south-eastward, forming the 

 Strait of Georgia glacer, and north-westward as that of Queen 

 Charlotte Sound. 



North of Vancouver Island, wherever looked for in the proper 

 situations, marks of heavy glaciation are found in all the channels 

 and fjords, to the southern extremity of Alaska where my obser- 

 vations terminated, though a coast-line similar in its general 

 features, and doubtless characterized by the same signs of a 

 former glaciation. extends far to the north-westward. The glacier 

 ice has not only filled the narrow fjords to a great depth, but 

 passing westward has occupied the wider straits which separate 

 the outer islands of the group which fringes the coast. 



In the Queen Charlotte Islands, parted widely from the 

 mainland, traces of local glaciation only, due to ice accumulating 

 on its own mountain system, are found. The northern shore of 

 these islands is however strewn with erratics which may have 



