493 
and being warned by the call of my companions, I bad to stop 
behind a large rock, whilst an enormous fragment fell down into 
the river with a tremendous crash. The temperature of the water 
near its issue from the ice-portal was 32° Fahr. ; three miles lower 
down from the glacier it was already 30° Fahr. By joint obser- 
vations with my aneroid and the boiling water apparatus, I found 
the altitude of the glacier to be 3837 feet above the level of the 
sea. As far as I could see, the glacier was wholly covered with 
debris. The rocky cliffs on both sides of the glacier were about 
500 feet high , almost vertical , and showed plainly streaked slips, 
a proof that the glacier must have been much higher in former 
times. 
A few hundred yards below the origin of the Forbes a second 
glacier stream joins the former. There being no chance for me to 
cross the stream , I had to content myself with observing the second 
glacier, that gives rise to the latter stream, in the distance. It con- 
sisted of pure white ice; only a few blocks lay scattered over its 
surface. Extensive ice and snow- fields were looming up from the 
glacier to gigantic rock-pyramids. The uniform surface of the ice- 
field appeared at the starting-point of the glacier fissured, and a 
grand ice-fall was to be observed, on which the glacier-ice was not 
only broken into the most differently 'shaped crags, needles, towers 
and walls, but also glistened in all shades from the brightest blue 
to the deepest green, few of the icicles appearing dyed in a deep 
pink. 1 The terminal face of this glacier lay about 200 feet higher 
than that of the former , and the shorter descent seems to be chiefly 
caused by the circumstance, that this glacier was not protected from 
the rays of the sun by piles of stones and rubbish like the other. 
1 In the European Alps the so-called “red snow” is found only upon the snow- 
fields, Out not upon real glacier-ice. It occurs generally some lew lines below the 
surface of the snow-field, and consists chiefly of the breed of small infusorise of the 
genus Discern'd, especially the Discerned nivalis , which, when grown, is not trans- 
parent and varying from brown-red to purple ; likewise of the germs of Protoccocus 
nivalis and Giges sanguineus. Haast likewise mentions such red snow. He observed 
it upon the snow-fields of the M’Coy Creek valley. But as to the nature of the red 
glacier-ice, future explorations will be necessary. 
