160 a King— Glaciers on Mountains of the Pacific Slope. 



are found in the region of the ancient neve, but extending down- 

 ward into what was formerly the zone of movement. 



Upon reaching the eastern side we found in a deep canon a 

 considerable glacier, having its origin in a broad neve which 

 reaches to the very summit of the peak. The entire angle of this 

 glacier can be hardly less than 28°. It is one series of cascades, 

 the whole front of the ice being crevassed in the most interest- 

 ing manner. Near the lower end, divided by a boss of lava, it 

 forks mto two distinct bodies, one ending in an abrupt rounded 

 face no less than nine hundred feet in height. Below this the 

 other branch extends down the canon for a mile and a half, 

 covered throughout almost this entire length with loads of 

 stones which are constantly falling in showers from the canon 

 walls on either side. Indeed for a full mile the ice is onlj 

 visible in occasional spots where cavities have been melted into 

 Its body and loads of stones have fallen in. From an archway 

 under the end a considerable stream flows out, milky, hke the 

 water of the Swiss glacier streams, with suspended sand. Fol- 

 lowing around the eastern base of Shasta, we made our camps 

 near the upper region of vegetation, where the forest and per- 

 petual snow touch each other. A third glacier of somewhat 

 greater extent than the one just described, was found upon the 

 northeast slope of the mountain, and upon the north slope, one 

 of much greater dimensions. The exploration of this latter 

 proved of very great interest in more ways than one. Eeceiv 

 mg the snows of the entire north slope of the cone, it falls in a 

 great field, covering the slope of the mountain for a breadth ot 

 about three or four miles, reaching down the canons between 

 lour and five miles, its lower edge dividing into a number ot 

 lesser ice-streams which occupy the beds of the canons. This 

 mass IS sufaciently large to partake of the convexity of tlie 

 cone, and, judging from the depth of the canons upon the south 

 and southeast slopes of the mountain, the thickness cannot be 

 less than from eighteen to twenty-five hundred feet. It ^ 

 crevassed m a series of immense chasms, some of them two 

 thousand feet long by thirty and even fifty feet wide. In o"^ 

 or two places the whole surface is broken with concentric STS- 

 terns of fissures, and these are invaded by a set of radial breaks 

 which shatter the ice into a confusion of immense blocks- 

 bnow bridges similar to those in the Swiss glaciers are the onlT 

 means of crossing these chasms, and lend a spice of danger o 

 the whole examination. The region of the terminal morain J 

 s quite unlike that of the Alps, I larger portion of the glaci 

 Itself bemg covered by loads of angul^ debris. The whole 

 north face of the mountain is one great body of ice, interrupte^ 

 by a few sharp lava ridges which project above its general lere^ 

 The veins of blue ice, the planes of stratification, were distinctly 



