BRIXDALS AND SAETER GLACIERS 417 



There is no moraine at the ice front. It rests for the most part on 

 clean ledge; so at the sides one sees the ice quite clean and free from 

 ground moraine where it projects over points of rock. At such places the 

 ice is grooved to take the shape of the ledge, and fragments of rock, 

 ground to the consistency of coarse sand and gravel, lie in front. At the 

 places where this was observed the ice had not 50 feet of thickness. The 

 thickness of the middle of the tongue was estimated at 240 feet by aneroid 

 measurement on the rocks above and at its base. There is not merely a 

 greater thickness of ice, but the thrvist from above caused greater effect 

 here than at Kjendals. 



The ledges at Brixdal are of gneiss in layers that slope 10 or 15 de- 

 grees toward the glacier. In ascending these layers a good deal of 

 polishing has been done, sufficient to cause the morainal boulders, sand, 

 and gravel that rest loosely on them to slip readily. These surfaces are 

 distinctly striated all over. I should think the ice must have passed 

 over them even last .year, to judge by the precarious attitude of this stuff 

 and the crusty clinging together of the coarse sand. There is no other 

 definite moraine in the valley than the huge blocks referred to. Neither 

 here nor at Kjendals was seen any equivalent to the clay of our tills. 

 Coarse sands were seen in the streams and the waters are milky greenish, 

 doubtless with matter held in suspension, but it is not perceptibly clearer 

 at the outlets from the Olden and Loen lakes, though these are 8 or 10 

 miles long. Penck (1879) noted this absence of terminal moraines in 

 some Scandinavian glaciers visited by him, and pointed out that what is 

 present is often not really terminal moraine at all, but merely lines of 

 boulders thrust together from the valley floor at times of glacial advance. 

 This, however, is not always the case. 



SAETER GLACIER 



Northeast of the Kjendalslirae, at a distance over the ice and moun- 

 tains of about 4 miles, is the Saeterbrae, ending 2,000 feet above the sea 

 in the canyon-like B^dal valley by which it must be approached from 

 Loen. 



The floor of the valley is of fine gravel, ascending pretty regularly for 

 3 miles from the lake, when it begins to flatten and give place to 

 meadows lying between lines of real terminal moraine. Both times 1 

 visited them it was raining hard, but they seem real moraine to me, con- 

 tinuous ridges of dirt and stones running across the valley in long lines, 

 some of them 30 feet high. I have seen neither planed nor striated peb- 

 bles in them, nor clays. In the brook in this valley I found the finest 

 and softest sand deposits of the region. 



