164 
ALASKA GLACIERS 
front for 35 miles, but disposed of a continuous accession 
of ice from the Muir, Grand Pacific, and other glaciers. 
Of that portion of the confluent glacier which lay upon 
the land, a part slid into the sea and was there melted, but 
another part, which happened to rest on comparatively 
flat surfaces, remained on the land and has been subjected 
to only atmospheric agencies of waste. These agencies 
have not yet completed its destruction, so that extensive 
patches of stagnant ice, receiving no accessions from 
neves, remain to testify to the comparative feebleness of 
the atmospheric attack. I think there can be no exag¬ 
geration in the estimate that the melting by the sea has 
exceeded by ten times the melting from direct insolation 
and the contact of warm air and warm rain. It is further 
to be noted that this work of the sea was performed in a 
land-locked bay, where water cooled by the ice tends to 
accumulate and is but slowly exchanged for the warmer 
water of the open ocean. On the outer coast, where the 
supply of warm water would be constantly renewed by 
currents, the melting power would be still greater. 1 
The warmth of the Pacific Ocean in this region depends 
chiefly on the great circling current of the North Pacific, 
a part of the planetary system of oceanic circulation which 
might be modified but would not be stopped by any causes 
we may suppose to have existed in Pleistocene time. All 
through the Pleistocene the melting power of the ocean 
along this coast must have been great, and it is not prob¬ 
able that glaciers could so far have withstood it as to ad¬ 
vance in deep water. The features of another part of the 
Alaska coast, to be presently described, render it probable 
that the glaciers were checked by the oceanic melting 
somewhere in the belt of shallow water, and were com- 
1 Muir Inlet near the glacier is 7,000 feet broad and 500 feet deep. Here Reid 
found a general temperature, at all depths, of 38° F. The oceanic temperature 
in the Gulf of Alaska is 58° F. The water of the inlet is 6 degrees warmer than 
melting ice, that of the neighboring ocean 26 degrees. 
