14 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



northern part of Miles glacier, past the 

 beautiful Abercrombie Rapids, and over 

 five miles of the stagnant Baird glacier. 

 Here ice underlies the ties and rails, and 

 a moraine with alders and cottonwoods 

 covers the icy slope on one side, while the 

 other is washed by the Copper River. 

 All this we saw from a railway automo- 

 bile or on foot, but readers of the Na- 

 TiONAiv Geographic Magazine; may see 

 it next year from a train. 



many glaciers suddenly begin a rapid 



ADVANCE 



In 1890 and 1891, when Professor 

 Russell visited Yakutat Bay, during his 

 explorations of the Mount Saint Elias re- 

 gion, under the auspices of the National 

 Geographic Society and the United 

 States Geological Survey, and in 1899, 

 when Messrs Gilbert, Gannett, and other 

 members of the Harriman Alaska Expe- 

 dition entered the bay, the glaciers were 

 found to be in a state of general reces- 

 sion. The authors of this article, in 

 1905, found clear evidence of continued 

 recession of the glaciers of Yakutat Bay, 

 the one notable exception being Galiano 

 glacier. 



In 1890 this glacier was covered by a 

 dense growth of alder and cottonwood on 

 its lower, stagnant, moraine-covered end, 

 but in 1905, to our amazement, this forest 

 cover was entirely destroyed. This re- 

 markable change in condition of Galiano 

 glacier puzzled us greatly, and the only 

 hypothesis which we were able to suggest 

 was that the series of vigorous earth- 

 quakes that visited the Yakutat Bay re- 

 gion in September, 1899, had in some 

 way caused such an advance in the Gali- 

 ano glacier as to completely destroy the 

 vegetation which had previously clothed 

 its lower end. The explanation was pro- 

 posed as only a vague hypothesis forced 

 upon us by the failure of other possible 

 explanations ; and we were not only igno- 

 rant of the nature of the process and its 

 behavior, but wholly unprepared for the 

 results which the hypothesis necessitated 

 in other neighboring glaciers ; for an ad- 

 vancing glacier under earthquake impulse 



was hitherto an unknown phenomenon of 

 nature. 



It was therefore a great surprise to the 

 senior author when he returned to the 

 Yakutat Bay field in tb- "ullcwing sum- 

 m.er (1906) to find :nar i^ithough some 

 glaciers had rc^a^nea unchanged and 

 others had continued their recession, so 

 long in progress, four glaciers had under- 

 gone an abrupt and absolute transforma- 

 tion, similar to that of the Galiano glacier 

 prior to 1905. One of these, the Varie- 

 gated glacier, an alpine glacier of mod- 

 erate size, which expands in a piedmont 

 bulb beyond the mountain base, was care- 

 fully studied in 1905. Its lower end was 

 essentially stagnant and covered with a 

 sheet of ablation moraine arranged in 

 bands of various colors, whence the name 

 of the glacier. Over this moraine we 

 could travel at will in any direction, and 

 up the valley glacier within the mountain 

 walls we made an excursion, in August, 

 finding no other difficulty in traveling 

 over the ice surface than that of an occa- 

 sional crevasse which broke the otherwise 

 smooth surface, and here and there a 

 mound or ridge of moraine which rose 

 above the clear ice that constituted the 

 larger portion of the glacier within the 

 mountain walls. 



Nine months later all this was changed. 

 The smooth, clear ice of the valley por- 

 tion of the glacier was transformed to a 

 sea of crevasses and seracs, like the 

 broken ice of the ice falls in alpine gla- 

 ciers ; and the crevassing extended out 

 into the moraine-covered piedmont bulb 

 beyond the mountain base. Here not 

 only was the ice so broken that it was im- 

 possible to travel on it, but it had thick- 

 ened perceptibly and advanced notice- 

 ably. So great and absolute was the 

 change in so short a time that it seemed 

 almost incredible, and was wholly with- 

 out precedent. 



THE HAENKE GLACIER ADVANCES A MILE 

 IN ONE YEAR 



To the west of Variegated glacier lies 

 the great Hubbard glacier, and still far- 

 ther on the Turner glacier, also large, but 



