THE CHARM OF ILLECILLEWAET 



101 



printer can only use black ink on white 

 paper. Yet their fidelity to detail is 

 admirable. 



This glacier, a solid, crystal stream, 

 flows about eighteen inches daily, and 

 most swiftly at its centre. The snow 

 of its body far above is many hundreds 

 of feet deep. It gradually changes as 

 it sinks, until, in its lower parts, the 

 snow has become solid ice. The upper 

 snow is called the neve. Where the 

 lower ice emerges free from snow, it is 

 called the dry glacier. Of course this 

 ice flows by reason of the attraction of 

 gravitation — the same force that will 

 make a long beam of ice when support- 

 ed only at each end and with no sup- 

 port in the middle, bend and sink until 

 curved like a horseshoe. 



So the ice crowds down the slope or 

 ravine, flowing with well nigh resistless 

 force. If the hills deviate or change its 

 course, the outside edge travels much 

 faster than the inner one. Variations 

 in its inherent pressure crack and splin- 

 ter it ; these cracks are widened by the 



sun and the flow of water from melting 

 ice, until they form crevasses some- 

 times a thousand feet deep, and four 

 and six rods wide. 



The forefoot of the Illecillewaet Gla- 

 cier is about i, 800 feet wide. Being 

 low down on the mountain side and 

 at the bottom of a ravine, the air is 

 warmer there, and the front of the 

 foot melts. On sunny, warm days, the 

 ice melts far up on the body of the 

 mass ; often this released water pours 

 into wells that the water makes. These 

 great holes are called moulins. When 

 the sides of transverse crevasses melt 

 and form ice-towers, the towers are 

 called seracs. 



The hypnotism of the mountains 

 made the trout-fishing in the Illecille- 

 waet river a few miles beyond Glacier 

 House, and available right beside the 

 railroad track, seem very tame. The 

 taking of a three-pound trout seemed 

 a small affair ; for, always, we were 

 dominated by the overmastering scen- 

 ery. Nature seemed on too large a 



DEFIANT OF THE ICE TRUST 



Photographed by Dan Beard 



