108 I. C. Russell — Expedition to Mount St. Elias. 



above the upper archway. Traversing the sand plain to the 

 westward, we came to another stream of nearly equal interest, 

 flowing along the western margin of the glacier, past the end of 

 the deep gorge called Floral pass. A small creek, flowing down 

 the pass, joins the stream and skirts the glacier just below the 

 mouth of a wild gorge on the side of the main valley. This 

 stream once flowed along the border of the Lucia glacier when 

 it was much higher than now, and began the excavation of a 

 channel in the rock, which was retained after the surface of the 

 glacier was lowered by melting. It still flows in a rock-cut 

 channel for about a mile before descending to the border of the 

 glacier as it exists at present. The geologist will see at once that 

 this is a peculiar example of superimposed drainage. The gorge 

 cut by the stream is a deep narrow trench with rough angular 

 cliffs on either side, and is a good example of a water-cut canon. 

 When the Lucia glacier melts away and leaves the broad- 

 bottomed valley clear of ice, the deep narrow gorge on its western 

 side, running parallel with its longer axes, but a thousand feet 

 or more above its bottom, Avill remain as one of the evidences of 

 a former ice invasion. 



During our reconnoissance we turned back at the margin of 

 the second river,' but a day or two later reached the same point 

 with the camp hands and camping outfit, and, placing a rope 

 .from bank to bank, effected a crossing. Our next camp was in 

 Moral pass. From there we occupied a topographical station on 

 the summit of the Floral hills, and made another reconnoissance 

 ahead, across the Hayden glacier,^ to the next mountain spur. 



Floral pass, like so many of the topographical features examined 

 during the recent expedition, has a peculiar history. It is a com- 

 paratively low-grade gorge leading directly across the end of an 

 angular mountain range forming one of the spurs of Mount 

 Cook. The position of the pass was determined by an east-and- 

 west fault and by the erosion of soft shales turned up on edge 

 along the line of displacement. At its head it is shut in by the 

 Hayden glacier, which flows past it and forms a wall of ice about 

 two hundred feet high. The water flowing out from beneath 

 the side of the glacier forms a muddy creek, which finds its way 

 over a bowlder-covered bed in the bottom of the gorge to the 

 border of Lucia glacier. Along the sides of the gorge there are 



* JSTamed in honor of the late Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden, founder of the 

 United States Geological Survey of the Territories. 



