FAR AND NEAR 



Go out on the eastern rim of the glacier, where 

 for a dozen miles or more one walks upon a nearly 

 level plain of ice, and if one did not know to the con- 

 trary, he would be sure he saw the agency of man all 

 about him. It is so rare to find Nature working with 

 such measure and precision. Here, for instance, is a 

 railroad embankment stretching off across this ice 

 prairie, — a hne of soil, gravel, and boulders, as uni- 

 form in width and thickness as if every inch of it had 

 been carefully measured, — straight, level, three 

 feet high, and about the width of a single-track road. 

 The eye follows it till it fades away in the distance. 

 Parallel with it a few yards away is another hne of 

 soil and gravel more suggestive of a wagon-road, 

 but with what marvelous evenness is the material 

 distributed ; it could not have been dumped there 

 from carts; it must have been sifted out from some 

 moving vehicle. 



Then one comes upon a broad band of rocks and 

 boulders, several rods in width, the margins per- 

 fectly straight and even, pointing away to the dis- 

 tant mountains. All these are medial moraines, — 

 material gathered from the mountains against which 

 the ice has ground as it slowly passed, and brought 

 hither by its resistless onward flow. Some time it 

 will all be dumped at the end of the glacier, adding 

 to those vast terminal moraines which form the 

 gravel plains that flank each side of the inlet. In 

 looking at these plains and ridges and catching 

 48 



