United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Where the glacier front remains for some time at one place, there is formed an accumulation of drift known as the terminal moraine. In valley glaciers it is shaped by the ice front to a crescent whose convex side is downstream. Some of the pebbles of the terminal moraine are angular, and some are faceted and scored, the latter having come by the hard road of the ground moraine.
It was to this glacier that the ships of the Alaska Ice Company resorted for the ice they carried to San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands, and, I believe, also to China and Japan. To load, they had only to sail up the fiord within a short distance of the front and drop anchor in the terminal moraine.
From this peak nearly the whole course of these three glaciers, their fountain amphitheaters, their canyon beds, and their lakes enclosed between their moraine arms, may be seen at once. The view from this peak is certainly one of the finest that I have ever seen.
The stranded bergs on the moraine bar at the mouth of Sum Dum Bay looked just as they did when I first saw them ten years ago. Before reaching Juneau, the Queen proceeded up the Taku Inlet that the passengers might see the fine glacier at its head, and ventured to within half a mile of the berg-discharging front, which is about three quarters of a mile wide.
Where the ice halted for a time in its general retreat, it left RECESSIONAL MORAINES, as this variety of the terminal moraine is called. The moraines of the Wisconsin drift lie upon the country like great festoons, each series of concentric loops marking the utmost advance of broad lobes of the ice margin and the various pauses in their recession.
Any day we might expect a heavy fall of snow, for the northern winter had already begun in the hills. We soon found the tracks of Blake's party, which led up the moraine, and carried us over quicksand and through glacial streams, icy cold. Finally we came to where Blake had started up the mountain side, and with all due regard to my friend, his trail was not an easy one.
We must risk our lives to save them. At the worst we can only slip, and then how grand a grave we will have, and by and by our nice bones will do good in the terminal moraine." But my sermon was far from reassuring him: he began to cry, and after taking another piercing look at the tremendous gulf, ran away in desperate excitement, seeking some other crossing.
It is a lovely lake, that had been blocked off from the ocean by a great terminal moraine until "Town Brook set it free." There is a legend current here, that a man who brought little credit but much trouble to the Pilgrims by his acts of wantonness, was said to have reported the discovery of a new sea; therefore "Billington's sea."
We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, and invaded the glacier. There were tourists of both sexes scattered far and wide over it, everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating-rink. The Empress Josephine came this far, once.
After my twelve-mile walk, I ate a cracker and planned the camp. I found that one of my boxes had been left on the steamer, but still we have more than enough of everything. We obtained two cords of dry wood at Juneau which Captain Carroll kindly had his men carry up the moraine to our camp-ground.
Word Of The Day