LAMPLUGH: GLAOIATION IN VANCOUVER ISLAND. 
69 
made the journey before, I reached tlie upper surface of the glacier 
by passing diagonally along the eastern moraine. The ice was at 
first hidden by boulders, gravel, and disintegrated granite, but we 
soon reached clear smooth ice. This was at first very deeply 
crevassed, and extended backward with a strong slope, so that at the 
end of the first two miles, we could not have been much less than 
1,000 feet above sea-level. We had now reached the crest of the 
slope, and looked, as it seemed to me, slightly downwards into a 
wide basin of ice which was probably six or eight miles across, and 
stretched away up the valley to some mountains which we estimated 
were not less than 40 miles distant.* 
From the mountains fianking the valley numberless feeders of 
ice poured in, so that the basin before us resembled a storm-tossed 
lake, the steep broken slope we had just passed being the compara- 
tively narrow outlet by which it discharged into the sea. 
After passing the crest we found that the crevasses were no 
longer open, their sides coming together some distance below the 
surface so as to form pools of water of most delicate and lovely blue 
tints deepening with the depth of the water. 
Travelling was now not so dangerous, though the surface of the 
ice being made up of fantastic hummocks, was extremely rough and 
irregular. 
Three or four miles ahead of us a large island of whiteish rock 
cropped out high above the ice. 
We now changed our direction and struck out across the glaciei'. 
There were still no open crevasses ; but very deep water-pools and 
tall steep hummocks, which were often very difficult to pass, shared 
the surface between them. We crossed a moraine of rapidly wasting 
granite blocks about a mile from the edge of the ice, and penetrated 
1,000 yards or so further, and then found it was time to return to the 
ship. The ice seemed to rise before us in long broken ridges running 
*In " Nature " for Juue 18th, 1885, there is a paragraph copied from a San 
Francisco paper stating that the gla- ier is about 150 miles long, and ends in chflFs 
500 feet high, but I think these are gross exaggerations. The cliffs were said to 
be 450 feet in height by the officers of our ship, but by comparing them with the 
section I have described on the eastern shore, which could be tolerably closely 
estimated, I came to the conclusion that the walls range from 240 to 350 feet, the 
latter being a very liberal estimate. 
