176 I. C. Hussell — Mt. St. Elias and its Glaciers. 



by thousands and tens of thousands of small crevasses. Its 

 surface is broadly undulating, and recalls the appearance of 

 portions of the rolling prairie lands west of the Mississippi. 

 It is in fact a dreary and lifeless prairie of ice. From the 

 higher swells of its surface one may see for miles in all 

 directions without observing a single object to break the even 

 monotony of the broken ice plain. 



On looking down on the glacier from an elevation of two or 

 three thousand feet on the bills bordering it on the north, even 

 on the wonderfully clear days that follow storms, its limits are 

 beyond the reach of vision. 



Moraines. — From any commanding station overlooking the 

 Malaspina glacier, as from the summit of the Chaix hills for 

 example, one sees that the great central area of clear, white 

 ice, is bordered on the south by a broad, dark band formed of 

 bowlders and stones. Outside of this and forming a belt con- 

 centric with it, is a forest covered area, in many places four or 

 five miles wide. 



In a general view, by far the greater part of the surface of 

 the glacier is seen to be formed of clear ice ; but in crossing it, 

 one comes first to the moraine and forest covered border, which 

 owing to the great obstacles it presents to travel, impresses one 

 as being far more extensive than it is in reality. 



The moraines not only cover all of the outer border of the 

 glacier, but stream off from the mountain spurs that project 

 into its northern border. One of these trains starting from a 

 spur of the Samovar hills crosses the entire breadth of the 

 glacier and joins the marginal moraine on its southern border. 

 This long train of stones and bowlders is really a highly com- 

 pound medial moraine, formed at the junction of the expanded 

 extremities of the Seward and Agassiz glaciers. These two 

 great ice- rivers are entirely above the snow line, and the debris 

 which they carry only appears at the surface after the ice de- 

 scends to the Piedmont region where the annual waste is in 

 excess of the annual supply. The stones and dirt previously 

 contained in the glacier are then concentrated at the surface, 

 owing to the melting of the ice that contains them. This is 

 the history of all of . the moraines of the Malaspina glacier. 

 They are formed of the debris brought out of the mountains 

 by the tributary Alpine glaciers, and concentrated at the sur- 

 face by reason of the ablation of the ice. 



Lobes. — The Malaspina ' glacier consists of three principal 

 lobes, each of which is the expansion of a large tributary ice 

 stream. The largest lobe has an eastward flow, toward Yakutat 

 bay, and is supplied mainly by the Seward glacier. The next 

 lobe to the west, is the expanded terminus of the Agassiz 

 glacier; its current is toward the southwest. The third great 



