a King— Glaciers on Mountains of the Pacific Slope. 163 



from a considerable elevation. Toward its lower end it is 

 very much broken up by transverse and longitudinal crevasses : 

 this is due to the fact, that it has here cut through the more 

 yielding strata of volcanic rock, and come upon an underlying 

 and unconformable mass of syenite. The ice front at its base 

 is about 500 feet in height, and the walls of lava which bound 

 its sides, rise from 1000 to 1500 feet above the surface of the 

 ice, generally in sheer precipices. 



The bed of the Cowlitz glacier is generally parallel to that of 

 the Nisqually, though its curves are less marked : the ice cas- 

 cades in which each originates, fall on either side of a black 

 cliff of bedded lava and breccia scarcely a thousand ieet in hor- 

 izontal thickness, while the mouths of the ghu-iers. if 1 inay be 

 allowed the expression, are about three miles apart. From the 

 jutting edge of this cliff hang enormous icicles frmu 75 to 100 

 feet in length. The slope of this glacier is less rt^ulai-. being 

 broken by subordinate ice cascades. Like the Nisqually its 

 lower extremity stretches out as it were into the forest, the 

 slopes on either side, where not too steep, being covered with 

 the mountain fir {Picea nobilis) for several hundred feet above 

 the level of the ice, while the Pinus Jlexilis grows at least 2000 

 feet higher than the mouth of the glacier. 



The general course of this glacier is south, but at its extremity 

 it bends to the eastward, apparently deflected from its course 

 by a cliff of older felsitic rock, more resisting than the lava. 

 The consequence of this deflection is a predominance ot lon- 

 gitudinal over transverse crevasses at this point, and an un- 

 usually large moraine at its western side, which rises several 

 hundred feet above the surface of the glaciers, and partakes of 

 the character of both lateral and terminal moraines : the mam 

 medial moraine of the glacier joins this near its lower end. 

 This medial moraine proceeds from the cliff which bounds the 

 ice cascade source of the glacier on the north, and bnngs down 

 a dark porous lava which is only found high up on the mount- 

 am near the crater. The position of the medial moraine on the 

 glacier would indicate that at least half its mass came from the 

 spur on the east, which is probably the case. 



This spur, comprehending the whole mass between the Low- 

 litz and White River glaciers, has the shape of a triangle whose 

 apex is formed by a huge pinnacle of rock, which as its bedding 

 indicates, once formed part of the crust of ^be mountain but 

 now stands isolated, a jagged peak rising about 3000 feet above 

 tbe glaciers at its foot, so steep that neither ice nor snow rest 

 ^Pon it One of the tributaries to the Cowlitz glacier trom 

 pis spur brings down with it a second medial moraine, wbicu 

 IS traceable to the mouth of the glacier, though m general tbese 

 tributary glaciers bring no medial moraines. 



