MALASPINA GLACIER. 229 



upon the ice of the glacier. In a general view by far the greater 

 part of the surface of the glacier is seen to be formed of clear 

 ice, but in crossing it one comes first to the forest and moraine- 

 covered border, which, owing to the great obstacles it presents 

 to travel, impresses one as being more extensive than it is in 

 reality. 



The moraines not only cover all of the outer border of the 

 glacier, but stream off -from the mountain spurs projecting into 

 it on the north. As indicated on the accompanying map, one of 

 these trains starting from a spur of the Samovar hills crosses the 

 entire breadth of the glacier and joins the marginal moraine on 

 its southern border. This long train of stones and bowlders is 

 really a highly compound medial moraine formed at the junc- 

 tion of the expanded extremities of the Seward and Agassiz 

 glaciers. 



All of the glaciers which feed the great Piedmont ice -sheet 

 are above the snow line, and the debris they carry only appears 

 at the surface after the ice descends to the region where the 

 annual waste is in excess of the annual supply. The stones and 

 dirt previously contained in the glacier are then concentrated at 

 the surface owing to the melting of the ice. This is the history 

 of all of the moraines on the glacier. They are formed of the 

 debris brought out of the mountains by the tributary Alpine 

 glacier, and concentrated at the surface by reason of the melting 

 of the ice. 



Malaspina glacier in retreating has left irregular hillocks of 

 coarse debris which are now densely forest -covered. These 

 deposits do not form a continuous terminal moraine, however, 

 but a series of irregular ridges and hills having a somewhat 

 common trend. They indicate a slow general retreat without 

 prolonged halts. The heaps of debris left as the ice front re- 

 treated have a general parallelism with the present margin of the 

 glacier and are pitted with lake basins, but only their higher 

 portions are exposed above the general sheet of sand and 

 gravel spread out by streams draining the glacier. 



The blocks of stone forming the moraines now resting on the 



