270 Notices of Memoirs — Glaciers in N. California. 



nearly covered by the falls of stone from the walls or cliffs, the ice 

 being only seen where the stones have found their way in, or through 

 the glacier, the other branch being abruptly terminated by a rounded 

 bluff 900 feet in height. A larger glacier occurs on the north-east 

 slope, and a still larger on the northern ; this latter covers the slope 

 for four miles in breadth, and sub-dividing into many smaller streams 

 on reaching the canons below, where it is believed to be not less 

 than 1,800 to 2,500 feet thick, and traversed by crevasses 2,000 

 long by 30, and even 60 feet in width. 



With the exception of thin sharp edges of lava projecting up- 

 wards above the general level, the whole northern face is one vast 

 body of ice, which is traversed by streams which pour into wide 

 crevasses, and which flow out milky with suspended sand at thq 

 lower ends. Here the whole face of the ice is covered with sheets 

 of angular debris, but neither moulines nor dirt bands were observed. 

 On the snowless side of the mountain, at a height of 8,000 feet, a 

 great terrace occurs, nearly 3,000 feet in width, entirely composed 

 of moraine matter. 



In a letter to Mr. King, Mr. S. F. Emmons, Assistant Geologist, 

 describes the glaciers of Mount Tachoma or Kainier, which form the 

 source of four rivers in Washington Territory. The summit of 

 Tachoma he describes as consisting of three peaks, the eastern being 

 the highest, separated from the others by deep valleys ; it is a circular 

 crater, a quarter of a mile in diameter, bare to a depth of 60 feet 

 below the rim, below which, down to 2,000 feet, the mountain slopes 

 are covered with an immense sheet of white granular ice, broken by 

 a few long transverse crevasses ; below this it is divided up by pro^ 

 jecting rock ridges into ice cascades for 3,000 feet, at angles almost 

 approaching the perpendicular; from the foot flow true glaciers, 

 sinking deeper, becoming narrower, and exhibiting smaller angles as 

 they descend. 



The Nisqually, the narrowest of the three main glaciers, is traversed 

 at its lower end by longitudinal and horizontal crevasses, where it 

 passes over unyielding unconformable syenite; walls of lava, 1,000 to 

 1,500 feet, rise as precipices above the surface of the ice. But in the 

 Cowlitz glacier the slopes above are not so steep, and are occasionally 

 covered with the Pinus flexilis and the mountain fir, the former 

 growing as high as 2,000 feet above the mouth of the glacier. 



The largest glacier of all is that of the White Eiver, which flows out 

 of the crater, extending at least ten miles, being five miles broad on the 

 mountain, and a mile and a half below. It appears to have eroded 

 and cut away not less than a third of the mass of the mountain, the 

 thickness of rock removed being not less than a mile. It has two 

 principal medial moraines, which form ridges, with peaks nearly 

 100 feet high. It is divided in two at the foot of the slope by a 

 rocky ridge, at the back of which a secondary glacier has scooped 

 out a basin-shaped bed. 



In a report to Mr. King, Mr. Arnold Hague, Assistant Geologist, 

 desci'ibes the extinct volcano of Mount Hood, in the Cascade range 

 of Oregon, on the southern slope of which he found three distinct 



