SECOND SUCCESSFUL ASCENT, 1870 



glaciers, while some of these secondary glaciers form 

 independent streams, which only join the main river 

 many miles below the end of the glaciers. 



The Nisqually, the narrowest of the three main 

 glaciers above mentioned, has the most sinuous course, 

 varying in direction from southwest to south, while 

 its lower extremity is somewhat west of south of the 

 main peak : it receives most of its tributaries from the 

 spur to the east, and has a comparatively regular 

 slope in its whole length below the cascades. There 

 are some indications of dirt-bands on its surface, when 

 seen from a considerable elevation. Toward its lower 

 end it is very much broken up by transverse and longi- 

 tudinal crevasses : this is due to the fact, that it has 

 here cut through the more yielding strata of volcanic 

 rock, and come upon an underlying and unconformable 

 mass of syenite. The ice front at its base is about 

 500 feet in height, and the walls of lava which bound its 

 sides rise from 1000 to 1500 feet above the surface of 

 the ice, generally in sheer precipices. 



The bed of the Cowlitz glacier is generally parallel 

 to that of the Nisqually, though its curves are less 

 marked : the ice cascades in which each originates, 

 fall on either side of a black cliff of bedded lava and 

 breccia scarcely a thousand feet in horizontal thick- 

 ness, while the mouths of the glaciers, if I may be 

 allowed the expression, are about three miles apart. 

 From the jutting edge of this cliff hang enormous 

 icicles from 75 to 100 feet in length. The slope of 

 this glacier is less regular, being broken by subordinate 

 ice cascades. Like the Nisqually its lower extremity 

 stretches out as it were into the forest, the slopes on 

 either side, where not too steep, being covered with 

 the mountain fir (Picea nobilis) for several hundred feet 

 above the level of the ice, while the Pinus flexilis grows 

 at least 2000 feet higher than the mouth of the glacier. 



The general course of this glacier is south, but at its 

 extremity it bends to the eastward, apparently de- 



137 



