Glaciation of British Columbia .— Dawson . 249 
RECENT OBSERVATIONS ON THE GLACIATION OF 
BRITISH COLUMBIA AND ADJACENT REGIONS . 1 
By Geo. M. Dawson, D. Sc., F. G. S. 
Assistant Director, Geological Survey of Canada. 
Previous observations in British Columbia 2 have shown 
that at one stage in the Glacial period—that of maximum 
glaciation—a great confluent ice-mass has occupied the re¬ 
gion which may be named the Interior Plateau, between the 
Coast Mountains and Gold and Rocky Mountain Ranges. 
From the 55th to the 49th parallel this great glacier has left 
traces of its general southward or south-eastward movement, 
which are distinct from those of subsequent local glaciers. The 
southern extensions or terminations of this confluent glacier, 
in Washington and Idaho Territories, have quite recently been 
examined by Mr. Bailley Willis and Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, 
of the U. S. Geological survey. 3 There is, further, evidence 
to show that this inland-ice flowed also, by transverse valleys 
and gaps, across the Coast Range, and that the fiords of the 
coast were thus deeply filled with glacier-ice which, supple¬ 
mented b}^ that originating on the Coast Range itself, buried 
the entire great valley which separates Vancouver Island 
from the mainland and discharged seaward round both ends 
of the island. Further north, the glacier extending from the 
mainland coast touched the northern shores of the Queen 
Charlotte Islands. The observed facts on which these gen¬ 
eral statements are based have been fully detailed in the pub¬ 
lications already referred to, and it is not the object of this 
note to review former work in the region further than to enu¬ 
merate the main features developed by it, and to add to these 
a summary of observations made during the summer of 1887 
in the extreme north of British Columbia, and in the Yukon 
basin beyond the 60th parallel, which forms ths northern 
boundary of that province. 
The littoral of the south-eastern part or “ coast-strip ” of 
Alaska presents features identical with those of the previously 
examined coast of British Columbia, at least as far north as 
lat. 59°, beyond which I have not seen it. The coast archi¬ 
pelago has evidently been involved in the border of a con- 
1 From the Geological Magazine, London, August, 1888. 
2 Quart, Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxi. p. 89. Ibid, vol. xxxiv, Can¬ 
adian Naturalist, p. 272, vol. viii. 
3 Bulletin U.' S. Geol. Survey, No. 40, 1887. 
