"The Discovery of Glacier Bay 



of the second class, at the head of a comparatively 

 short fiord that winter had not yet closed. Here we 

 landed, and climbed across a mile or so of rough 

 boulder-beds, and back upon the wildly broken, re- 

 ceding front of the glacier, which, though it descends 

 ' to the level of the sea, no longer sends off bergs. Many 

 large masses, detached from the wasting front by ir- 

 regular melting, were partly buried beneath mud, 

 sand, gravel, and boulders of the terminal moraine. 

 Thus protected, these fossil icebergs remain un- 

 melted for many years, some of them for a century or 

 more, as shown by the age of trees growing above 

 them, though there are no trees here as yet. At length 

 melting, a pit with sloping sides is formed by the 

 falling in of the overlying moraine material into the 

 space at first occupied by the buried ice. In this way 

 are formed the curious depressions in drift-covered 

 regions called kettles or sinks. On these decaying 

 glaciers we may also find many interesting lessons on 

 the formation of boulders and boulder-beds, which in 

 all glaciated countries exert a marked influence on 

 scenery, health, and fruitfulness. 



Three or four miles farther down the bay, we came 

 to another fiord, up which we sailed in quest of more 

 glaciers, discovering one in each of the two branches 

 into which the fiord divides. Neither of these glaciers 

 quite reaches tide-water. Notwithstanding the ap- 

 parent fruitfulness of their fountains, they are in the 

 first stage of decadence, the waste from melting and 

 evaporation being greater now than the supply of new 

 ice from their snowy fountains. We reached the one in 



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