JS THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



less and less snow, and at no part of the journey were able to 

 see a glacier. An east-and-west line divides the mountain 

 into glacier-bearing and non-glacier-bearing halves. The as- 

 cent was formerly always made upon the south side, where, 

 as stated, there are no glaciers, and this is why able scientific 

 observers like Professor Whitney and his party should have 

 scaled the mountain without discovering their existence. . . . 

 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 twenty -eight degrees. 

 It is one series of cascades, the whole front of the ice being 

 crevassed in the most interesting manner. Near the lower end, 

 divided by a boss of lava, it forks into 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 fall- 

 ing in showers from the canon-walls on either side. Indeed, 

 for a full mile the ice is only 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 consider- 

 able stream flows out, milky, like the water of the Swiss 

 glacier-streams, with suspended sand. Following around the 

 eastern base of Shasta, we made our camps near the upper 

 region of vegetation, where the forest and perpetual 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. Receiving 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 of about 

 three or four miles, reaching down the canons between four and 

 five miles, its lower edge dividing into a number of lesser ice- 

 streams which occupy the beds of the canons. This mass is 

 sufficiently large to partake of the convexity of the cone, and, 

 judging from the depth of the canons upon the south and 

 southeast slopes of the mountain, the thickness can not be less 



