84 GLACIERS OF THE CANADIAN ROCKIES AND SELKIRKS. 



at the bottom and growing slowly upward until the ice is again completely 

 covered. In this way the material is being more thinly spread over the morainic 

 ice core and its melting accelerated. The great height which the moraine has 

 been able to attain in its lower part is due to the fact that the glacier is unpro- 

 tected by debris over its general surface, and the differential melting is so much 

 greater than it would be if the surface of the ice were protected as in the case of 



the Victoria. 



The material of which this moraine is composed is principally quartzite and 

 a silvery (sericitic?) schist, with a binding of glacial sand and clay. Occasionally 

 boulders are scratched, and are very generally bruised, with their edges and 

 corners rounded from rough treatment they have received upon the debris cones 

 and the moraine. About one-third of the distance along this moraine there occur 

 two elongated depressions, exactly in the crest of the moraine. The larger and 

 better defined of the two is 125 by 50 feet and 6 to 8 feet in depth (plate xxxii, 

 fi<nire 2). They are seen from a distance most plainly when the sun's rays 

 strike somewhat obliquely, permitting the sides to cast shadows into the bottoms 

 of the depressions. Attention was first called in print to these depressions by 

 the Vaux Brothers in 1900,^ showing very plainly as they do in their early 

 photographs. Before these depressions were visited it was thought by the writer 

 that they might represent the sites of drained lakelets, similar to those found 

 upon the Victoria, but the explanation suggested by the above investigators 

 seems to be the connect one. The moraine appears to have been formed of two 

 ridges, laterally welded together, and these depressions appear to be spaces 

 left where the two ridges did not quite meet. Owing to the sliding of the debris 

 upon the inner slope of the moraine the basins are being obliterated and will 

 eventually completely disappear. 



Including the debris cones this lower portion of the left lateral is some 4,000 

 feet in length, rises to less and less height above the general ice level, and gives 

 out for a short distance, where the ice abuts directly against the quartzite cliffs 

 of Glacier Crest. Up to a height of 40 to 50 feet patches of morainic matter have 

 lodged upon the rock shelves. One-quarter mile beyond, a crested ridge again 

 makes its appearance composed of materials derived from Mt. Lookout, just to 

 the southeast. The moraine is largely made up of quartzite and schistose boul- 

 ders bound together with sand and clay and supporting a sparse growth of 

 mosses and Alpine plants. The ridge rises to a height of 35 to 40 feet above 

 the ice, curves around to the eastward, becomes reduced in height, and disap- 

 pears under the neve, which is strewn with rock fragments derived from the 

 cliffs of Mt. Lookout. 



c. Terminal moraines. From the lower extremity of the left lateral there 

 curve around into the valley two lower ridges, of the nature of terminal moraines. 

 The inner and younger of these forms an inconspicuous ridge, from 6 to 10 feet 

 high, and passes into the terminal moraine at which the glacier was found to be 



' " The Great Glacier of the Illicilliwaet." George and William S. Vaux, Jr., Appalachia, vol. ix. 

 1900, p. 164. 



