52 ALASKA GLACIERS 



lowed the epoch when the entire fiord was filled with ice 

 is a matter of doubt. 



Coming to this region while the features of Glacier Bay 

 were fresh in mind, I searched gravel and till, wherever 

 opportunity offered, for vestiges of earlier forests which 

 might have been overridden by the glaciers, but the search 

 was unsuccessful; and so far as my evidence goes, the 

 condition of expanded glaciers observed by Malaspina 

 and Vancouver may not have been preceded in this 

 locality and in recent geologic times by a condition of 

 relatively contracted glaciers such as now obtains. Rus- 

 sell found a buried forest under the foreland gravels at 

 the south end of Russell Fiord, 1 but the demonstrated 

 oscillation need not have been of great extent. 



Hidden Glacier. The valley in which the distal part 

 of Hidden Glacier lies is a characteristic glacial trough 

 with rather uniform cross-section. Its course curves from 

 northwest to a little south of west, and it joins Russell 

 Fiord at right angles. In 1899 for a distance of a mile 

 and a half it was occupied by tide-water with a width of 

 three-quarters of a mile; then came a tract of gravelly 

 alluvium, nearly two miles long and a little narrower than 

 the inlet. The glacier itself had a width of a mile. The 

 ice front sloped gradually down to the alluvial plain, and 

 although the profile was slightly arched, its greatest de- 

 clivity (measured on a photograph) was only ten degrees. 

 In the lower mile the surface was remarkably smooth and 

 there were no important crevasses. There were lateral 

 moraines, and near the southern of these a single strong 

 medial, but the general face was exceptionally free from 

 drift. Close to the front margin the ice was somewhat 

 discolored, but so nearly white as to suggest that the 

 lower layers, usually dark with englacial drift, were not 

 visible. That they really lay at some distance below the 



thirteenth Ann. Kept. U. S. Geol. Survey, Part n, p. 89, 1893. 



