88 
EXPLORATIONS IN TURKESTAN. 
11,300 feet. A small recent moraine lay about 300 feet forward from the end of 
the glacier ; a larger one, holding a .small frozen lake in its hollow, wa.s a half mile 
farther forward. There was too mucli snow on the ground just in front of the 
glacier to judge whether it was advancing or retreating at the time of our visit. 
SUBDIVISION OF THE GLACI.VI. I'ERIOD. 
The few exam])les above described of moraines of different ages suffice to 
suggest, but not to demonstrate, a subdivision of the glacial period, as it affected the 
Tian Shan Mountains. The many additional examples of more complicated series 
of moraines in the valleys below tlie higher ranges south of Issik Kul, afterward 
Fig. 52. — Snowfield below Sulto-bulak Pass in ihe Kungei Ala-tau, looking southwest ; a Cirque in the background. 
examined by Mr. Huntington, were fortunateh' more explicit in their testimony, 
and leave no doubt that the glacial period there, as elsewhere, was not a single 
climatic epoch, but a succession of epochs, and that the different epochs were of 
different intensities. It is important, as Mr. Huntington points out in his report, 
to bear in mind that the actual succession of glacial epochs was in all probability 
more complicated than the exi.sting records directh' indicate. It tnily seems po.ssi- 
ble, in our present ignorance as to the cause of glaciation, that four or five glacial 
epochs of progressively decreasing intensitv and duration might constitute the 
whole of the glacial period; but it is eminently prolxible that the first epoch was 
not the severest one, and that the record of earlier epochs of small intensity might 
be destroyed by the work of later and more intense glacial epochs. We therefore 
