90 THE ICE AGE IN CANADA. 



submerged at this time, otherwise the Cordilleran glacier 

 could scarcely have existed. 



"The Cordilleran region, in consequence of its high 

 elevation, and probably also in part from other concurrent 

 causes by which the northern hemisphere was affected at 

 the inception of the period of glaciation, appears to have 

 become at this time pre-eminently the condenser of the 

 North Pacific. Precipitation occurred upon it chiefly in 

 the form of snow, which was so much in excess of the 

 influence of the summer heat as to accumulate from year 

 to year. Great glaciers formed in the higher mountains, 

 probably in the first instance among those situated nearest 

 to the coast ; but eventually the greater part of the 

 region became covered and buried either in n4v4 or 

 beneath glacier-ice. The directions of motion of the 

 glaciers at first produced was doubtless in conformity 

 with that of the valleys of mountain streams ; but at a 

 later date, when the Cordillera became completely buried, 

 a general movement was initiated from a region situated 

 between the fifty-fifth and fifty-ninth parallels of north 

 latitude, in south-easterly and north-westerly bearings.* 

 The Cordillera, in fact, between the forty-eighth and 

 sixty-third parallels — or for a length of about 1,200 

 miles — seems to have assumed an appearance closely 

 analagous to that of Greenland at the present day, save 

 that in consequence of the high bordering mountain 

 ranges, with the general trend of these and of the lower 

 intervening country of the interior plateau, the greater 

 part of the ice was forced in this case to follow its length 

 in the directions above indicated, instead of discharging 



* Such general movement probably affected only the central portion 

 of the ice-mass by which the Cordillera was covered, and there is no 

 reason to suppose that it was otherwise than sluggish. 



