724 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



tion of old terminal moraines, spanned the 

 lower valley from side to side. Through this 

 wood there poured a glacial river, emptying 

 itself into the bay. Strange to say, this gla- 

 cier-washed forest, touching the ice on one 

 side and the sea on the other, was full of 

 flowers. The red bells of the glossy leaved 

 Desfontainia, the lovely pink blossoms of the 

 Phylesia, the crimson berries of the Pennetia, 

 stood out in bright relief from a background 

 of mossy tree -trunks and rocks. After an 

 hour's walking, made laborious by the spongy 

 character of the ground, — a mixture of loose 

 soil and decaying vegetation, in which one 

 sank knee-deep, — the gleam of the ice began 

 to shimmer through the trees ; and issuing 

 from the wood, the party found themselves in 

 front of a glacier wall, stretching across the 

 whole valley and broken into deep rifts, caves, 

 and crevasses of dark blue ice. The glacier 

 was actually about a mile wide ; but as the 

 central portion was pressed forward in advance 

 of the sides, the whole front was not presented 

 at once. It formed a sharp crescent, with the 

 curve turned outward. One of the caves in 

 this front wall was some thirty or forty feet 

 high, about a hundred feet deep, and two or 

 three yards wide at the entrance. At the 



