GLACIERS OF MOUNT RAINIER 



direction, emptying finally in Puget Sound at the city 

 of Seattle. 



On the northeast side of the mountain, descending 

 from the same high neves as the Emmons Glacier, is 

 the Winthrop Glacier. Not until halfway down, at 

 an elevation of about 10,000 feet, does it detach itself 

 as a separate ice stream. The division takes place at 

 the apex of that great triangular interspace so aptly 

 named "the Wedge." Upon its sharp cliff edge, 

 Steamboat Prow, the descending neves part, it has 

 been said, like swift-flowing waters upon the dividing 

 bow of a ship at anchor. The simile is an excellent 

 one ; even the long foam crest, rising along the ship's 

 side, is represented by a wave of ice. 



Undoubtedly the Wedge formerly headed much 

 higher up on the mountain's flank. Perhaps it ex- 

 tended upward in the form of a long, attenuated 

 "cleaver." It is easy to see how the ice masses im- 

 pinging upon it have reduced it to successively lower 

 levels. They are still unrelentingly at work. It is on 

 the back of the Wedge, it may be added here, that is 

 situated that small ice body which Maj. Ingraham 

 named the "Interglacier." That name has since been 

 applied in a generic sense to all similar ice bodies lying 

 on the backs of "wedges." 



Of greatest interest on the Winthrop Glacier are 

 the ice cascades and domes. Evidently the glacier's 

 bed is a very uneven one, giving rise to falls and pools, 

 such as one observes in a turbulent trout stream. The 

 cascades explain themselves readily enough, but the 

 domes require a word of interpretation. They are 

 underlain by rounded bosses of especially resistant 

 rock. Over these the ice is lifted, much as is the 

 water of a swift mountain torrent over submerged 

 bowlders. Immediately above each obstruction the 

 ice appears compact and free from crevasses, but as 

 it reaches the top and begins to pour over it breaks, 

 and a network of intersecting cracks divides it into 



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