GLACIERS OF THE CANADIAN ROCKIES AND SELKIRKS. 8 1 



valleys. With the effect in mind of relatively thin ice sheets upon the neighbor- 

 ing peaks, the writer is quite prepared to admit the sufficiency of glaciers to pro- 

 duce hanging- valleys, when the ice is deep, concentrated, and operates for a long 

 period over stratified formations. 



CHAPTER VI. 



ILLECILLEWAET GLACIER. 



I. General Characteristics. 



Passing from the Rockies westward to the Selkirks,we find much evidence 

 of the increasing precipitation; one of the first to which our attention is unpleas- 

 antly called is the tantalizing number of snow-sheds which obstiTJict our view. 

 The mountains are much more completely forested than we fotmd them in the 

 Rockies and nearly everywhere the valley slopes are scarred with avalanche 

 tracks. From extensive snow-fields (plate xxxii, figure i) hundreds of tongues of 

 ice descend to much lower altitudes than is possible in the Rockies, with their 

 slighter snowfall. The largest of these ice tongues to be seen from the railway 

 is the so-called " Great Glacier," or Illecillewaet,i the glacier that gives rise to the 

 "rushing water." Owing to the ease with which it may be reached from the 

 station it has been visited by more people than any other glacier in the two 

 Americas, although, so far as known, it was not seen by the eye of white man 

 until the year 1883. In that year it was discovered by Major Rogers, who 

 was in search of the railway pass which now bears his name. It was originally 

 named Agassiz Glacier by Ernest Ingersoll,^ but this name has since been 

 transfeiTcd to one of the commensal streams of the great Malaspina, in Alaska. 



The glacier lies just to the south of Mt. Sir Donald (10,808 feet), between it 

 and Glacier Crest, and as a great tongue of ice spills over the rim of the extensive 

 collecting basin enclosed bet vveen Mt. Sir Donald, Mt. Macoun (9,988 feet), Mt. Fox 

 (io,s 72 feet), and Mt. Lookout (8,219 feet). See maps, plate xxx and xxxiii. The 

 glacier flows to the northwest, is but 1-3- miles in length, and in this distance tapers 

 from a mile in breadth to a sharply pointed nose. The axis of the glacier is slightly 

 curved, with its convexity turned toward the southwest. Lying in a broad valley 

 with this exposure, and with no covering of debris, the glacier receives the full 

 effect of the noonday and afternoon sun. In spite of this the nose attains the 

 altitude of 4,800 feet, or 870 feet lower than the Yoho. Since the collecting 

 areas are very similar in size, this difference must be due mainly to the differences 

 in the amount of snowfall received by the two regions. The latitude of the nose 

 of the IlleciUewaet is 51° 15', being nearly a third of a degree farther south 

 than the Yoho. From the ndve line, with an elevation of about 7,500 feet, 

 the glacier descends 2,700 feet to the nose, or at the rate of about 2,000 feet to the 



' This name is pronounced as though it were spelled Illy-silly-wet, with the stress upon the middle 

 syllable. 



2 "The Rocky Mountains as Seen from the Canadian Pacific Railway." Science, vol, vii., i8S6, p. 243. 



