58 ALASKA GLACIERS 



topography resulting from stream erosion can fail to be 

 impressed with the profound modification here wrought 

 by the ice. (See fig. 102.) 



As the extent of the glaciers has varied, masses of 

 gravel and other drift have been lodged here and there on 

 the valley walls and afterward overridden, and where the 

 subsequent action has not sufficed for their removal they 

 have been carved into forms harmonious and continuous 

 with the contiguous rock forms. Here and there, where 

 the rills of the valley wall have trenched these deposits 

 so as to expose them in section, one may see horizontal 

 bedding in a mass of gravel whose external surface ex- 

 hibits only the smooth curves of flowing ice. One of the 

 larger of these gravel masses lay close to Hidden Glacier, 

 against the lower slope of the north wall of the valley 

 (pi. v). Upon its sculptured back were scattered boul- 

 ders left by the ice which had recently overridden it, 

 and among them were a few great blocks of white granite, 

 brought from some distant source. Descending toward 

 the glacier, the surface of this gravel mass ran under one 

 of the remnants of unmelted ice to which reference has 

 already been made. 



Nunalak Glacier. Nunatak Fiord, like the fiord of 

 Hidden Glacier, has been boldly sculptured by ice. Its 

 lofty south wall descends steeply to the water and is com- 

 paratively simple in contour. The north wall is in gen- 

 eral lower, is flanked by heavy masses of gravel and other 

 drift, and is interrupted by two branching troughs leading 

 over saddles of moderate height to the northern part of 

 Russell Fiord. These troughs seem to have been largely 

 shaped by the ice, which flowed through them to the 

 northwest. One is now bare, but the other contains an 

 ice mass with the habit of the dying glaciers of Glacier 

 Bay. The mass receives a small tributary glacier near its 

 summit, but the end seen from Nunatak Fiord in 1899 



