Glacier

“ Out of every gulch came a brawling stream whipped to milk-white frenzy; snow lay heavy upon the higher levels, while now and then from farther inland peered a glacier, like some dead monster crushed between the granite peaks. ”

“ One glacier after another comes into view, and the outlines of the mountain are ever changing, though all the way around, from whatever point of view, the form is maintained of a grand, simple cone with a gently sloping base and rugged, crumbling ridges separating the glaciers and the snowfields more or less completely. The play of colors, from the first touches of the morning sun on the summit, down the snowfields and the ice and lava until the forests are aglow, is a never-ending delight, the rosy lava and the fine flushings of the snow being ineffably lovely. ”

“ GLACIER STREAM.
Pulling around to the west side of the glacier, I clambered up a steep declivity over a pile of mud and rock, which the expanding and moving ice had pushed out from its bed. Once at the top of this yielding slope, the eye was met by a perfect forest of spires; but it was not easy to get on the glacier itself. Along its margin, half in mud and rock and half in ice, a torrent of dirty water came tearing along at a furious pace, disclosing the laminated structure of the ice in a very beautiful manner ”

“ The water that escapes from a glacier is either black, like ink, or green, like absinthe, or white, like milk; it is always troubled, and charged with mud or earth full of fertilizing matter. So, while the glaciers make the higher valleys into a land of desolation and misery, lower down on the slopes that drink life from its flood, it is a garden, an orchard, a rich vine country, smiling hill-sides, shaded with trees and crowned with flowers. While a glacier is a stream of ice, it is not formed of frozen water, but of frozen snow. ”

“ But the strangest thing about the voices of the glaciers I have yet to tell. Whenever the sun is shining brightly, as I have said, and the gentians and the globe flowers open their petals and the birds start the chorus of the day, the glacier begins singing, too, humming to itself a pleasant tune. When the sky grows cloudy, even for a short time, the birds stop singing, the flowers cover their faces, the bees and butterflies hurry to shelter, and the glacier's song gradually dies away. ”

“ A glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow. It pushes ahead of it masses of boulders which are packed together, and they stretch across the gorge, right in front of it, like a long grave or a long, sharp roof. ”

“ The winds and storms, too, contribute their share of dust and sand, and as the glacier still flows on, shrunken in size and laden with heaps of earth and rocks, at length it lays itself to rest, a mass of dirty ice and stones, in the valley towards which it has been ceaselessly progressing. ”

“ When on my boat-voyage up the bay in the previous fall, this great glacier of Kingaite heaved heavenward its hoary head, supported by a body of crystal blue: on my return the same was covered with its winter dress. Before the cold weather sets in, all the crevices in the glacier are charged with water, which, congealing, is caused to expand; and the ice explodes with a sound like loud thunder, rending the mountains and shooting off icebergs and smaller fragments at the various points where the glacier has its arms reaching down to the sea. ”

“ I may as well stop here, and explain to you, once for all, what a glacier is. You see before you, as in this case, say thirty or forty mountain peaks, and between these peaks what seem to you frozen rivers. The snow from time to time melting, and dripping down the sides of the mountain, and congealing in the elevated hollows between the peaks, forms a half-fluid mass—a river of ice—which is called a glacier.
As it lies upon the slanting surface, and is not entirely solid throughout, the whole mass is continually pushing, with a gradual but imperceptible motion, down into the valleys below. ”

“ The glacier, starting in its infant purity from some white, unsullied peak, loses, before many years have past, its spotless character. The wintry frosts, gathering [Pg 70] into iron bonds the streams which trickle down the mountain-sides, expand the water in freezing, and shatter the rocks with a force that the most solid cliffs cannot resist. Broken and weathered fragments are washed down from the slopes on every fall of rain, and dropping on to the once unspotted bosom of the glacier, swell the burden which is gradually laid upon it with advancing years. ”

“ Waves are formed in the surface ice of the glacier because surface ice moves faster than the main mass beneath. On the bordering mountain walls the ice rises into still greater waves "foaming about the feet of the dark central crests like the surf of enormous breakers." And this great, still image of the parent sea, from which the air currents carried the moisture that made it, has eddies and whirlpools, and like the troubled sea, "whose waters cast up mire and dirt," the glacier, where it swirls along its shores, works pebbles and dirt to the surface. ”

“ If you go to the end of the glacier, where it comes out into the lower valley, and look up to the icy cliffs which form the termination of it, and watch there for a few minutes, you soon see masses of ice breaking off from the brink and falling down with a thundering sound to the rocks below. ”

“ Thus advancing, crevassed, convulsed, and rent into gaping chasms, loaded with blocks of stone, the glaciers are grinding down the everlasting hills and lowering the proud summits of their birthplace to the plain. Imagine half a hemisphere covered by a universal glacier whose powers of abrasion and transportation are proportionately enlarged: will not the appearances we are attempting to explain be adequately accounted for by so tremendous an agent? Let us turn to contemporaneous glaciers of the Alps and elsewhere for an answer. ”

“ In many parts, magnificent glaciers extend from the mountain side to the water's edge. It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more beautiful than the beryl-like blue of these glaciers, and especially as contrasted with the dead white of the upper expanse of snow. The fragments which had fallen from the glacier into the water were floating away, and the channel with its icebergs presented, for the space of a mile, a miniature likeness of the Polar Sea. ”

“ Glaciers are formed by thawing of the exposed snow on top of the huge deposits, the water trickling down through the moss, and freezing solidly. Gradually, through continued thawing and freezing, the whole drift is changed into a field of ice. The first sign of movement comes when the mass of ice breaks away from the cliffs at its upper edges. There is an infinitesimal downward sagging, as with incredible deliberation it moves on with its cargo of rock and sand. But, slowly as it moves, its power is overawing. A glacier is the embodiment of irresistible force. ”

“ Down we go through the woods, and finally strike upon a rocky, rugged path, on through a mass of miles of pulverized rock, fragments of boulders, stone chips, and the rocky debris of ages, which has been brought down by the tremendous grinding of the slow-moving glaciers, till we reach a valley covered with the moraine in front of the great ice arches of the Glacier des Bois, out of which rushes the river. ”

“ From the sea of ice down to the point where the abutting glacier arrested my advance with sledge and dogs, the ice-river or arm of the glacier was quite uniform in its rounding up, presenting the appearance—though in a frozen state—of a mighty rushing torrent. The height of the discharging face of the glacier was 100 feet above the sea.
Without doubt, the best time of the year to travel over glacier mountains is just before the snows have begun to melt. The winter snows are then well impacted on the glacier surface, and all the dangerous cracks and water-ditches are filled up. ”

“ The waters of these brooks—many thousands in all—form a large stream, which flows along on the surface of the ground under the glacier, and comes out at last, in a wild, and roaring, and turbid torrent, from an immense archway in the ice at the lower end, where the glacier terminates among the green fields and blooming flowers of the lower valley.
The glaciers are formed from the avalanches which fall into the upper valleys in cases where the valleys are so deep and narrow and so secluded from the sun that the snows which slide into them cannot melt. ”

“ To those unacquainted with the fact of their motion, but who have stood upon these vast accumulations of ice, and noticed their apparent fixity and rigidity, the assertion that a glacier moves must appear in the highest degree startling and incredible. ”

“ In such remodelled moraines, the glacier-mud has, of course, been more or less washed away. We have here a blending of the action of water with that of the glacier; and, indeed, how could it be otherwise, when the colossal glaciers of past ages gradually disappeared or retreated to the mountain-heights? The wasting ice must have occasioned immense freshets, the action of which we shall trace hereafter, when examining the formation of our drift-ponds, of our river-beds and estuaries, as well as the river-terraces standing far above the present water-level. ”

“ While thus flying through the air a small portion escapes from the mountains to the sky as vapor; but far the greater part is at length locked fast in bossy overcurling cornices along the ridges, or in stratified sheets in the glacier cirques, some of it to replenish the small residual glaciers and remain silent and rigid for centuries before it is finally melted and sent singing down home to the sea. ”

“ Then up and before us spread the mighty glacier, 25 miles by 30, fed by many smaller ones. Morains of rock lifted above the surface in long even lines running back for miles, showing the edge of each of the frozen rivers, which have united to make the mighty single one. ”

“ A glacier is one of the natural wonders of the [Pg 260] world and well might every one pay a visit to one of these great earth-sculpturers. The time to visit a glacier is during late summer, when the snows of the preceding winter are most completely removed from the surface. With the snows removed, the beauty of the ice and its almost stratified make-up are revealed. The snow, too, conceals the yawning bergschlunds and the dangerous, splendid crevasses. ”

“ The features of a glacier trough depend much on the length of time the preexisting valley was occupied with ice. During the infancy of a glacier, we may believe, the spurs of the valley which it fills are but little blunted and its bed is but little broken by steps. In youth the glacier develops icefalls, as a [141] river in youth develops waterfalls, and its bed becomes terraced with great stairs. The mature glacier, like the mature river, has effaced its falls and smoothed its bed to grade. ”

“ Glaciers are streams of ice slowly descending from mountains and hanging on the slopes of those mountains from century to century. The white mass gradually descends, but so slowly that its progress is imperceptible to the eye. But as it descends and the lower parts melt, fresh ice forms in the upper part, and the great mass, therefore, remains the same in hulk. The slow and eternal descent of these hard fields of ice crushes the rocks beneath, and the glacier water, therefore, is mingled with powdered rocks and is whiter than the blue sea-water. ”

“ More than once I have seen extremely steeply sloping glaciers, which were terminated abruptly by a lofty precipice, at the bottom of which huge piles of boulders and occasional icy fragments sufficiently indicated the forward motion of the ice; at other times, the slope of the valley in which the glacier lies again becoming gentle, the ice ceases to be fissured and rugged, and is capable of being walked on without difficulty. ”

“ Between this pile of rocks and the glacier there is a small plain, about a quarter of a mile in width, the soil of which is clay without pebbles and flakes of ice, because the waters which continually flow from the glacier carry them off. On ascending farther, we discovered, to the right, a lake situated at one of the angles of the glacier, the banks of which were formed of ice, and the bed received a portion of the waters that flowed from the mountains. The water was perfectly green, a colour it acquired by the rays of light that broke against the ice. ”

“ Glacier ice is formed by snow accumulating at a given point more rapidly than it melts. This is due chiefly to wind, snow [Pg 353] slides, and heavy snowfall. The glacier, heavy and powerful, planes, polishes, and reshapes the surface over which it travels, or the walls with which it comes in contact. Most of the lake-basins were gouged out by glaciers. Mountain-ranges have been worn down to hills or plains; cañons and depressions have been filled, and extensive areas overlaid with ground-up rocky material. The gentle snowflake has been the earth's chief maker of scenery and soil. ”

“ Of all the beautiful and interesting things mountain districts have to show, none surpass the glaciers.
Now a glacier is simply a river of ice, which never melts away even during the hottest summer. Glaciers form high up on mountains, where there is a great deal of snow in winter, and where it is never very hot even in summer. ”

“ These bald, glossy, westward-leaning rocks in the open middle ground, with their rounded backs and shoulders toward the glacier fountains of the summit mountains and their split angular fronts looking in the opposite direction, every one of them displaying the form of greatest strength with reference to physical structure and glacial action, show the tremendous force with which through unnumbered centuries the ice flood swept over them, and also the direction of the flow; while the mountains, with their sharp summits and abraded sides, indicate the height to which the glacier rose ”