Piedmont Glaciers. . 121 



frozen surface. At the same time we obtain glimpses of other 

 vast ice-fields toward the west, beyond Icy bay ; but their limits 

 in that direction are unknown. 



Later in the season I made an excursion far out on the Malas- 

 pina glacier from the extreme southern end of the Hitchcock 

 range, and became acquainted with many of its peculiarities. Its 

 surface, instead of being a smooth snow-field, as it appears from 

 a distance, is roughened by thousands of crevasses, many of 

 which are filled with clear, blue water. Over hundreds of square 

 miles the surface appears as if a giant plow had passed over it, 

 leaving the ice furrowed with crevasses. The crevasses are not 

 broad ; usually one can cross them at a bound. They appear to 

 be the scars left by rents in the tributary ice-streams. 



The stillness far out on the great ice-field is immediatel}^ 

 noticed by one who has recently traversed the sloping surfaces 

 of the tributary glaciers. It is always silent on that vast frozen 

 l^lateau. There are no surface streams and no lakes ; not a rill 

 murmurs along its channel of ice ; no cascades are formed by 

 streams plunging into moulins and crevasses. The water pro- 

 duced by the melting of the ice finds its way down into the 

 glacier and perhaps to its bottom, and must there form rivers of 

 large size ; but no indications of their existence can be obtained 

 at the surface. The icy surface is undulating, and resembles in 

 some respects the great rolling prairies of the west ; it is a prairie 

 of ice. In the central portion not a shoot of vegetation casts its 

 shadow, and scarcely a fragment of rock can be found. The 

 boundaries of the vast plateau have never been surveyed, but its 

 area cannot he less than five hundred square miles. The clear 

 ice of the center greatly exceeds the extent of the moraine-cov- 

 ered borders. It has a general elevation of fifteen or sixteen 

 hundred feet, being highest near the end of the Hitchcock range, 

 where the Seward glacier comes.in, and decreasing from there in 

 all. directions. From the summit of Blossom island and other 

 commanding stations it is evident that the dark moraine belts 

 about its borders are compound and record a varied history. 

 Far away toward the southeast the individual elements may be 

 distinguished. The dark bands of debris sweep around in great 

 curves and concentric, swirl-like figures, which indicate that there 

 are complicated currents in the seemingly motionless plateau. 



The, Malaspina glacier belongs to a class of ice bodies not pre- 



