7 6 



THE MUSEUM. 



in a glacial pothole, the softer rocks 

 which were with them being ground to 

 powder and carried away by the water, 

 so that only the harder ones remain. 

 The surface of the glacier gradually 

 melts until the bottom of the pothole 

 in which these pebbles lie is even with 

 the top. Then the pebbles protect the 

 ice immediately under them from the 

 direct rays of the sun, and prevent it 

 from melting, and as the surrounding 

 surface melts they remain on this un- 

 melted ice, which now forms a conical 

 projection above the surface of the 

 glacier, the top of the projection being 

 what was formerly the bottom of the 

 hole. 



Not far below the Muir Glacier, and 

 on its wide side, a stream has cut its 

 way through an enormous mass of mor- 

 ainal detritus, carrying away the gravel 

 and revealing the still standing tree 

 trunks of a long buried forest. At first 

 thought it might be imagined that the 

 sweeping down by the glacier of the 

 enormous mass of coarse gravel would 

 have uprooted or broken off and over- 

 thrown the trees of this ancient forest, 

 and that when again revealed by the 

 cutting away of the drift, all its trunks 

 would have been found prostrate. The 

 reverse of this is true, however. While 

 there are many fallen trunks, most of 

 them are still standing, though usually 

 broken off at a height of from 10 to 25 

 feet above the present level of the 

 stream valle) . This, of course, shows 

 that the forest was not in the direct 

 path of the glacier, but was to one 

 side, and that at first the encroachment 

 of the morainal drift on the standing 

 forest was very gradual, and the pro- 

 cess of covering it up very slow. The 

 gravel of the moraine was pushed over 

 little by little into and upon the area 

 covered by the forest, the glacier act- 

 ing as a plow acts, and pushing out of 

 its way and off to one side the loose 

 material, which at length covered up 

 the forest. Until the gravel had been 

 deposited to a very considerable thick- 

 ness the moraine's advance was not so 

 rapid as to overwhelm the standing 



trees. Instead of that, as it was de- 

 posited about them gradually it soon 

 became an absolute protection to the 

 trunks, at least to the height to which 

 they were wholly covered. The details 

 of the burial and subsequent uncover- 

 ing of this forest will no doubt ulti- 

 mately be told by the geologists and 

 botanists of the expedition. 



The day after leaving Sitka the ship 

 followed the coast, at first about twenty 

 miles distant, but later it ran in much 

 closer, in order to look at a great glac- 

 ier which comes down from the Fair- 

 weather range to meet the sea, and 

 which on the coast survey chart is call- 

 ed La Perouse 



This glacier has a front three miles 

 wide Its northern half seems white 

 and new, and to be moving, while the 

 southern half appears old, dirty from 

 melting, and dead. Under the new 

 ice for almost the whole width of the 

 front, old dirty ice can be seen, and the 

 impression is gained that a new and 

 active glacier is flowing over one that 

 is old and dead. On either side of the 

 glacier's front the beach shows, and it 

 is apparent that the ice here is moving 

 over the more or less level ground, and 

 not through a channel that it has cut 

 out. 



In one of the lifeb ats a party land- 

 ed through ihe surf, which was rather 

 high, though not really bad, and in do- 

 ing so got pretty well soaked by surf 

 breaking behind the boat. A small 

 skiff that was being towed was tossed 

 about by a combing breaker and pound- 

 ed on the beach so hard that one of its 

 sides was split 



From the moraine at the side of the 

 glacier a portion of its surface could be 

 seen, split in every conceivable direc- 

 tion, and i roken up into a bristling 

 mass of sharp pinnacles from i 5 to 40 

 feet high, over which it would be im- 

 possible to pass. At one point at the 

 side of the glacier was a deep cavern 

 under the ice, green and blue, and 

 dripping from a thousand points so 

 much water as to feed a small stream 

 that flowed from it. 



