STEEP TRAILS 



around to the west, while a well-characterized 

 terminal moraine, formed by the glacier to- 

 wards the close of its existence, unites them 

 near their lower extremities at a height of 

 eighty-five hundred feet. Another pair of 

 older lateral moraines, belonging to a glacier 

 of which the one just mentioned was a tribu- 

 tary, extend in a general northwesterly direc- 

 tion nearly to the level of Big Smoky Valley, 

 about fifty-five hundred feet above sea-level. 



Four other canons, extending down the 

 eastern slopes of this grand old mountain into 

 Monito Valley, are hardly less rich in glacial 

 records, while the effects of the mountain- 

 shadows in controlling and directing the move- 

 ments of the residual glaciers to which all these 

 phenomena belonged are everywhere deUght- 

 fully apparent in the trends of the canons 

 and ridges, and in the massive sculpture of 

 the n^ve wombs at their heads. This is a very 

 marked and imposing mountain, attracting 

 the eye from a great distance. It presents a 

 smooth and gently curved outline against the 

 sky, as observed from the plains, and is whit- 

 ened with patches of enduring snow. The 

 summit is made up of irregular volcanic tables, 

 the most extensive of which is about two and 

 a half miles long, and hke the smaller ones 

 is broken abruptly down on the edges by the 



186 



