PLEISTOCENE GEOLOGY OF MOOERS QUADRANGLE 



29 



geographic conditions of the lake or fiord seemingly protected 

 coasts are thus rapidly waveworn, an observation which J)r 

 Gilbert personally coniinunicak'd to me from his experience in 

 Alaska. In a glacial lake such wave-made beaches would fre- 

 quently occur as worked over morainal deposits recently aban- 

 doned by the retreat of the ice sheet. Such wave action would 

 cast up materials higher than waves would reach along the 

 shores removed from the ice front. 



The magnitude and power of berg-made waves in situations 

 where wind-made waves can hardly reach any considerable size, 

 has been vividly described by Dr Isaac L. Hayes 1 from personal 

 experience in the Sermitsialik fiord on the west coast of Green- 

 land in the voyage of the steamer Panther. The calving of the 

 front of the glacier which enters the sea in this fiord produced 

 a wave of vast proportions. " The wave/' states Hayes, " occa- 

 sioned by an earthquake only can be compared with it in mag- 

 nitude and force. . . Waves of considerable though not 

 dangerous magnitude followed, and it was quite half an hour 

 before the waters were at rest." 



Upper limit of beaches 

 The upper limit of beaches or to be more concise the upper 

 limit of wave action on the Mooers quadrangle appears to be 

 found in the northwest corner. of the area at 720 feet according 

 to the local contour of the map, but west of the area mapped a 

 possible higher deposit occurs at the corner of the road to 

 Covey Hill postoffice. This 720 foot deposit is a coarse cobble- 

 stone bar ending on the south with a spitlike hook just north 

 of Kellas brook. Beachlike ridges also occur to the south 

 along the road at 720 and 725 feet, and again at Cannon Coiners 

 on either side of the English river as shown on the map. Pos- 

 sible wave marks occur on the south of the English river as 

 high as 750 feet according to the contours of the map. Still 

 farther south along the western border of the quadrangle and 

 north of Deer pond, what appears to be weak wave action is 

 indicated by the configuration of the ground and rounded gravel 

 at about 705 feet. On the hillside west of this locality water- 



^ayes^ Isaac L. A Visit to a Greenland Glacier. Harper's New 

 Monthly Magazine. January 1872. 44:212-13. 



