of 



day, in the Rockies, there are only a dozen or so 

 small glaciers, mere fragments of the once great 

 ice cap which originally covered deeply all the 

 higher places and slopes, and extended unbroken 

 for hundreds of miles, pierced strangely with a 

 few sharp peaks. 



The small remaining glaciers in the Rocky 

 Mountains lie in sheltered basins or cirques in 

 the summits and mostly above the altitude of 

 thirteen thousand feet.. These are built and sup- 

 plied by the winds which carry and sweep snow 

 to them from off thousands of acres of treeless, 

 barren summits. The present climate of these 

 mountains is very different from what it was 

 ages ago. Then for a time the annual snowfall 

 was extremely heavy. Each year the sun and 

 the wind removed only a part of the snow which 

 fell during the year. This icy remainder was 

 added to the left-over of preceding years until 

 the accumulation was of vast depth and weight. 



On the summit slopes this snow appears to 

 have been from a few hundred to a few thousand 

 feet deep. Softened from the saturation of melt- 

 ing and compressed from its own weight, it be- 



258 



