86 
ALASKA GLACIERS 
period so recent that the forest has not yet reoccupied the 
abandoned ground. 
As the Harvard has recently retreated more than its 
neighbors, and as its velocity is presumptively high, its 
future changes will have special value as indices of the 
local variations in the conditions of glaciation, and the 
record of its magnitude in 1899 is therefore important. 
Unfortunately the party did not approach it closely, and 
the photographs are deficient in detail at critical points, 
but they will enable the future observer to recognize any 
change of important magnitude. The best available data 
for 1899 are contained in Curtis’s photograph No. 273, 
reproduced at page 72 in volume 1. The east end of the 
frontal cliff, as there shown, is not far (between 1,000 and 
2,000 feet) from the apex of a delta, or alluvial fan, built 
by the stream from a small hanging glacier. It is also 
seen that the eastern part of the glacier cascades about a 
half mile from the front, dropping so low that its tidal 
cliff has only half the height of that of the central part. 
At the west the relation of the Harvard to the Radcliffe 
is manifestly sensitive to the influence of advance or re¬ 
treat. A moderate recession would separate the two 
glaciers; an advance would deflect the lower part of the 
Radcliffe medial moraine into parallelism with the Har¬ 
vard medials (see fig. 44). 
Smith Glacier reaches the fiord three or four miles from 
the Radcliffe, and is of the same order of magnitude. Fed 
by several tributaries among the crests of the range, it 
gathers in a high mountain valley and then descends in 
magnificent cascades down the mountain front to the sea. 
In the last part of its course it has scarcely any valley, 
the outer surface of the ice being practically flush with 
the face of the mountain; and there is no flattening of its 
profile as it reaches the water. Though its lower slope is 
so seamed by crevasses as to exhibit a mere congeries of 
