VieiD from Pinnacle Pass. 183 



the Sierra Nevada, but their origin lias never been explained. The 

 glacier is here at work sculpturing similar forms ; but still it is 

 impossible to understand how the process is initiated. 



" Right in front of us, and only a mile or two away, rise the 

 cliffs, spires, and pinnacles of the Hitchcock range. Every ravine 

 and amphitheatre in the great mountain mass is deeply filled 

 with snow, and the sharp angular crests look as if they had been 

 thrust up through the general covering of white. The northern 

 end of the range is clearly defined by the east-and-west fault to 

 which Pinnacle pass owes its origin. The trend of the mighty 

 cliffs on the southern face, on Avhich we have found a perch, is at 

 right angles to the longer axis of the Hitchcock range, and marks 

 its northern terminus both topographically and geologically. 



" There is not even a suggestion of vegetation in sight. The 

 eye fails to detect a single dash of green or the glow of a single 

 Alpine flower anywhere on the rugged slopes. A small ava- 

 lanche from the snow-cliffs above, cascading over the cliff- which 

 shelters me and only a few yards away, tells why the precipices 

 are so bare and desolate : they have been swept clean by ava- 

 lanches. 



" Far down the western snow-slope I can distinguish crevasses 

 and dirt bands in the Seward glacier, which flows southward 

 past the range on which we sit. The marginal crevasses along the 

 border of the glacier can clearly be distinguished. As usual, 

 they trend up-stream and, meeting medial crevasses, break the 

 surface of the glacier into thousands of pinnacles and tables. 

 Along the center of the stream there are V-shaped dirt bands, 

 separated by 'crevasses, which point down-stream and give the 

 appearance of a rapid flow to the central portion of the glacier. 

 From this distance its center has the appearance of ' watered ' 

 ribbon. 



''A little toward the south of where the medial crevasses are 

 most numerous, and at a locality where two opposite mountain 

 spurs force the ice-stream through the comparatively narrow 

 gorge, there is evidently an ice-fall, as the whole glacier from 

 side to side disappears from view. The appearance of Niagara 

 when seen from the banks of the river above the Horseshoe falls 

 is suggested. Beyond this silent cataract, the eye ranges far out 

 over the broad, level surface of the Malaspina glacier, and traces 

 the dark morainal ribbons streaming away for miles from the 

 mountain spurs among which the}^ originate. From the extreme 



19— Nat. Geog. Mag., vol. Ill, 1801. 



