PHYSICAL AND CLIMATAL CONDITIONS. 91 



laterally on both sides to the sea. A certain proportion 

 of the ice, however, during the maximum phase of this 

 great glacier, tlowed through passes in the coast ranges, 

 and uniting there with ice derived from the western 

 slopes of these ranges, filled the great valley between 

 Vancouver island and the mainland, impinged upon the 

 shores of the Queen Charlotte islands, and still further 

 north reached the ocean across the coast archipelago of 

 the south-eastern coast-strip of Alaska. 



" Having, from an examination of the notes of various 

 arctic explorers, arrived definitely at the conclusion that 

 the glaciers of the eastern part of the continent possessed 

 a northward as well as a southward direction of motion 

 from their main gathering-ground,* the writer was pleased 

 to be able to avail himself of the opportunity afforded by 

 the Yukon expedition to investigate the conditions of the 

 northern part of the Cordilleran glacier.-|- Evidence was 

 there obtained of its northward or north-westward direc- 

 tion of movement, and this has since been confirmed and 

 added to by observations in surrounding regions by Mr. 

 E. Gr. McConnell, of the Canadian Geological Survey 

 (1888), and by Mr. I. C. Eussell, of the United States 

 Geological Survey (1889).| On the Lewis and Pelly 

 rivers, branches of the great Yukon, striated rock-sur- 

 faces, evidently due to the general Cordilleran glacier, 

 were noted ; in the case of the first-mentioned river as 



* Annual Report Geol. Surv. Can,, 1886, p. 56, R. 



t Chalmers (Am. Geologist, Nov., 1890) very properly proposes the 

 names Cordilleran, Laurentian, &c., "■System of Glaciers " to express the 

 fact that like the modern glaciers of the Alps and even of Greenland, 

 a system and not a single glacier is meant. 



X Bulletin Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. I., p. 99. 



§ Geological Magazine, Dec. .3, Vol. V., p. 348. Annual Report 

 Geol. Surv. Can., 1887-88, p. 40, b. 



