6 J. W. Goldthwait — Glacial Cirques 



snow-covered and carved by valley glaciers, and at length given 

 certain minor alterations by the continental ice sheet. 



The " Gulfs' 1 or " Ravines: 1 



The abnormal size and shape of the ravines which so deeply 

 indent the sides of the Presidential Range has been commented 

 on by many writers. It would be hard to find a more vivid 

 description of them than was written by Starr King, for whom 

 one of the grandest of the gulfs has been named. Telling of 

 a trip up Tuckerman Ravine, he says : 



" Emerging from the woods now, we see that the ravine is of 

 horseshoe shape, the opposite outer cliff more than a thousand 

 feet in height, the bottom sloping upwards towards the backward 



crescent wall and the rim quite level Facing us as we 



climbed was the grand curve of the precipice, symmetrical seem- 

 ingly as that of the great Colosseum The face of the 



wall was wet with weak streams that flash brilliantly in the sun. 

 . . . . The stupendous amphitheatre of stone would of itself 

 repay and overpay the labor of the climb. It is fitly called the 

 'Mountain Colosseum.' No other word expresses it; and that 



comes spontaneously to the lips The eye needs some hours 



of gazing and comparative measurement to fit itself for an appre- 

 ciation of its scale and sublimity. One can hardly believe while 

 standing there, that the sheer concave of the back wall of the 

 ravine was the work of an earthquake throe."* 



In Professor Hitchcock's " Geology of New Hampshire," 

 references appear over and over again to the peculiar form of 

 these great ravines, which have been " hollowed out of the 

 mountains." From the empyrical descriptions one comes to 

 suspect that the gulfs owe their broad form and crescentic 

 headwalls to valley glaciers. Several line drawings borrowed 

 from Starr King's " White Hills" lend weight to this suspicion, 

 particularly one view of King Ravine from Randolph Hill.f 

 In describing Tuckerman Ravine, Hitchcock calls it a deep 

 cleft, near the foot of Mount Washington, " excavated out of 

 the plateau much in the manner of a gorge." The descent 

 into it from the plateau " is dangerous along the most feasible 

 route, and impossible most of the way. The innermost part 

 of the ravine is semi-circular, the outer cliff rising directly a 

 thousand feet." Farther down, as it approaches the Glen, 

 " the gorge becomes more open and is hardly to be distinguished 

 from ordinary mountain valleys.";): Accompanying this de- 

 scription is a remarkably good heliotype which shows the 



* T. S. King : The White Hills, their legends, landscape, and poetry. 

 Boston, 1860, pp. 346-349. 



f C. H. Hitchcock : Geology of New Hampshire, vol. i, fig. 81, 1874. 

 X Op. cit., pp. 622-624. 



