SUMMER IN A BOG. 15 



does not diminish. There must be an exodus 

 from the home and the frozen North. Are the 

 avenues of travel blocked with ice? All the 

 hardships and fatalities of perpetual winter 

 must be faced or avoided. The tragedy of want 

 and frostbite — stop! Shake aside the phan- 

 tasm! 



Last and youngest of the vast physical proc- 

 esses of the earth was the glacial ice^sheet 

 which rested here. With slow encroachment it 

 dragged its bulks over the land. In its peri- 

 odical congealments from year to year, the 

 loess — ^the flour ground from the rocks — ^with 

 the boulders, pebbles, 'and sand, were gathered 

 up in its progress and borne to this final ter- 

 minus. 



Here the sun's rays melted the ice masses, 

 and their freight of drift lies in the moraines 

 or is scattered over the fields, imbedded in the 

 alluvium of succeeding ages. 



There is a glacier — Malaspina, at the foot 

 of Mt. St. Elias, on which sufficient material 

 has collected in places to sustain the growth of 

 a forest. Beneath this growth the glacial ice 

 is 1,000 feet deep. 



A similar forest, but of greater extent, grow- 

 ing on ice is found in Siberia, in the region, 

 it is said, of the Okhotsk Sea. When boring 

 for a well in the vicinity of this forest, at a 



