XIV. GLACIERS OF MOUNT RAINIER 



BY F. E. MATTHES 



FRANCOIS EMILE MATTHES was born at Amsterdam, Holland, on 

 March 1 6, 1874. After pursuing studies in Holland, Switzer- 

 land and Germany, he came to the United States in 1891 and 

 graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 

 1895. Since 1896 he has been at work with the United States 

 Geological Survey, mostly in the field of topography. He has 

 been honored by and is a member of many scientific societies. 



His topographic work on the maps of Yosemite and Mount Rainier 

 National Parks made for him many appreciative friends on the 

 Pacific Coast. His pamphlet on "Mount Rainier and Its 

 Glaciers" was published by the United States Department of 

 the Interior in 1914. He secured consent for its republication 

 in the present work. 



The impression still prevails in many quarters that 

 true glaciers, such as are found in the Swiss Alps, do 

 not exist within the confines of the United States, and 

 that to behold one of these rare scenic features one 

 must go to Switzerland, or else to the less accessible 

 Canadian Rockies or the inhospitable Alaskan coast. 

 As a matter of fact, permanent bodies of snow and 

 ice, large enough to deserve the name of glaciers, occur 

 on many of our western mountain chains, notably in 

 the Rocky Mountains, where only recently a national 

 reservation Glacier National Park was named for 

 its ice fields ; in the Sierra Nevada of California, and 

 farther north, in the Cascade Range. It is on the 

 last-named mountain chain that glaciers especially 

 abound, clustering as a rule in groups about the higher 

 summits of the crest. But this range also supports 

 a series of huge, extinct volcanoes that tower high 

 above its sky line in the form of isolated cones. On 



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