OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 23 



There are forty-eight square miles of these glaciers, ranging in 

 width from five hundred feet to a full mile and in thickness from fifty 

 feet to many hundreds, perhaps even more than a thousand feet. 



Mount Rainier is nearly three miles high, measured from sea level. 

 It rises nearly two miles above its immediate base. Once it was a 

 complete cone like the famous Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of 

 Japan. Then it was probably 16,000 feet high. 



ONCE WAS 2,000 FEET HIGHER 



Indian legends tell of the great eruption which blew its top off. 

 There have been slight eruptions within memory, one in 1843, one 

 in 1854, one in 1858 and the last in 1870. Even now it is only dor- 

 mant. Jets of steam melt fantastic holes in the snow and ice at its 

 summit, and there are hot springs at its foot. But it is entirely safe 

 to visit Mount Rainier. Further eruptions are unlikely and, in any 

 event, would amply announce their coming. 



The National Park which incloses Mount Rainier is about eighteen 

 miles square, containing three hundred and twenty-four square miles. 

 It is easily reached by railroad and automobile from neighboring cities. 

 A new automobile road enables stages to bring visitors to beautiful 

 Paradise Valley, whose flowered slopes are bordered by the great 

 Nisqually, Paradise, and Stevens Glaciers. One may reach this point 

 in four hours from Tacoma and return the same day. But it is a spot 

 where the visitor may well spend weeks. 



The Nisqually Glacier is the most impressive though by no means the 

 largest of the glaciers. It is five miles long and, at Paradise Valley, is 

 half a mile wide. Glistening white and fairly smooth at its shining 

 source on the mountain's summit, its surface here is soiled with dust 

 and broken stone and squeezed and rent by terrible pressure into 

 fantastic shapes. Innumerable crevasses, or cracks, many feet deep 

 break across it, caused by the more rapid movement of the glacier's 

 middle than its edges; for glaciers, again like rivers of water, de- 

 velop swifter currents nearer mid-stream. 



Professor Le Conte tells us that the movement of Nisqually Glacier 

 in summer averages, at mid-stream, about sixteen inches a day. It 

 is far less at the margins, its speed being retarded by the friction of 

 the sides. 



It is one of the great pleasures of a visit to Mount Rainier National 

 Park to wander over the fields of snow and climb out on the Nisqually 

 Glacier and explore its crevasses and ice caves. 



Like all glaciers, the Nisqually gathers on its surface masses of 

 rock with which it strews its sides just as rivers of water strew their 

 banks with logs and floating debris. These are called lateral moraines, 

 or side moraines. Sometimes glaciers build lateral moraines miles 



