LYNN CANAL II 



at the foot of a mountain range, resembling a continental 

 glacier in its mode of wasting, but distinguished by the 

 fact that it is fed by the alpine glaciers of the mountain. 

 An alpine glacier may be simple and separate, or com- 

 pound. Two or more often descend from the same neve. 

 Still more frequently two meet and coalesce after the 

 manner of rivers, and a trunk glacier may have many 

 tributaries. Small alpine glaciers are sometimes called 

 glacierets, or, if visible high on the sides of mountain 

 valleys, hanging glaciers. 



For the purpose of the present report it is convenient to 

 distinguish glaciers which reach the sea and discharge 

 bergs, from those which end on the land. Reid calls 

 these, severally, tide-water and alpine glaciers; 1 and 

 they have also been called (after whose initiative I do not 

 know) live and dead glaciers. Reid's use of * alpine ' con- 

 flicts with the well-established use already mentioned, and 

 the terms ' live ' and ' dead ' are clearly misleading, as the 

 great majority of the active glaciers of the world fail to 

 reach the sea. I shall abbreviate * tide-water ' to tidal and 

 employ non-tidal as its antithesis. 



LYNN CANAL 



The order in which the glaciers were observed was from 

 east to west, and it has been found convenient to adopt 

 this as the order of description also. 



On the islands of southeastern Alaska there are no 

 glaciers, and those of the mainland, south of Juneau, nestle 

 in recesses of the mountains so far from the steamer route 

 that we had only distant glimpses. But in Lynn Canal we 

 followed a great fiord between ranges at once so lofty as 

 to project well above the snow-line and so bold as to ex- 



1 Glacier Bay and its Glaciers. By Harry Fielding Reid. Sixteenth Ann. Kept. 

 U. S. Geol. Survey, part i, 1896. See pp. 429 and 442. The term tide-water 

 was used by Russell as early as 1892. See Am. Geol., vol. ix, p. 322, 1892. 



