5 2 
ALASKA GLACIERS 
lowed the epoch when the entire fiord was filled with ice 
is a matter of doubt. 
Coming to this region while the features of Glacier Bay 
were fresh in mind, I searched gravel and till, wherever 
opportunity offered, for vestiges of earlier forests which 
might have been overridden by the glaciers, but the search 
was unsuccessful; and so far as my evidence goes, the 
condition of expanded glaciers observed by Malaspina 
and Vancouver may not have been preceded in this 
locality and in recent geologic times by a condition of 
relatively contracted glaciers such as now obtains. Rus¬ 
sell found a buried forest under the foreland gravels at 
the south end of Russell Fiord, 1 but the demonstrated 
oscillation need not have been of great extent. 
Hidden Glacier, —- The valley in which the distal part 
of Hidden Glacier lies is a characteristic glacial trough 
with rather uniform cross-section. Its course curves from 
northwest to a little south of west, and it joins Russell 
Fiord at right angles. In 1899 for a distance of a mile 
and a half it was occupied by tide-water with a width of 
three-quarters of a mile; then came a tract of gravelly 
alluvium, nearly two miles long and a little narrower than 
the inlet. The glacier itself had a width of a mile. The 
ice front sloped gradually down to the alluvial plain, and 
although the profile was slightly arched, its greatest de¬ 
clivity (measured on a photograph) was only ten degrees. 
In the lower mile the surface was remarkably smooth and 
there were no important crevasses. There were lateral 
moraines, and near the southern of these a single strong 
medial, but the general face was exceptionally free from 
drift. Close to the front margin the ice was somewhat 
discolored, but so nearly white as to suggest that the 
lower layers, usually dark with englacial drift, were not 
visible. That they really lay at some distance below the 
1 Thirteenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, part n, p. 89, 1893. 
