ON THE MORSE GLACIER 45 



pears to be cut off and separated from the main ice sheet 

 by a boulder- and gravel-strewn ice plain a mile wide. 

 The detached portion is called the Morse. One day three 

 of us spent several hours upon the Morse. It is a mighty 

 ice sheet in itself, nearly or quite a mile wide. It is dead 

 or motionless, and is therefore free from crevasses. Its 

 rim comes down to the gravel like a huge turtle shell and 

 we stepped up on it without difficulty. At first it was 

 very steep, but a few minutes climbing brought us upon 

 its broad smooth gently sloping back. The exposed ice 

 weathers rough, and traveling over it is easy. We found 

 a few old crevasses, many deep depressions or valleys 

 and several little creeks singing along deep down be- 

 tween blue vitreous walls; also wells of unknown depth 

 and of strange and wonderful beauty. We came upon a 

 moraine that suggested a tumble-down stone wall, quite 

 as straight and uniform. It soon disappeared beneath the 

 ice, showing what a depth of snow had fallen upon it 

 since it started upon its slow journey from the distant 

 mountains. We pushed up the gentle slope for several 

 miles and until the snow began to be over our shoes, 

 when we turned back. I had climbed hills all my life, 

 but never before did I walk upon a hill of ice and stop to 

 drink at springs that were deep crystal goblets. 



The waste of the Morse Glacier is carried off by 

 two large turbid streams that rush from beneath it and on 

 their way to the inlet uncover a portion of a buried for- 

 est. About the buried forest our doctors did not agree. 

 The timber, mostly spruce, was yet hard and sound, 

 which might almost bring the event within the century. 

 A sheet of gravel nearly 200 feet thick seems to have 

 been deposited upon it suddenly. The trees, so far as 

 exposed, had all been broken off ten or twelve feet from 

 the ground, by some force coming from the west. In 

 some places the original forest floor was laid bare by the 



