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MALASPINA GLACIER.
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upon the ice of the glacier. In a general view by far the greater part of the surface of the glacier is seen to be formed of clear ice, but in crossing it one comes first to the forest and moraine-covered border, which, owing to the great obstacles it presents to travel, impresses one as being more extensive than it is in reality.

The moraines not only cover all of the outer border of the glacier, but stream off from the mountain spurs projecting into it on the north. As indicated on the accompanying map, one of these trains starting from a spur of the Samovar hills crosses the entire breadth of the glacier and joins the marginal moraine on its southern border. This long train of stones and bowlders is really a highly compound medial moraine formed at the junction of the expanded extremities of the Seward and Agassiz glaciers.

All of the glaciers which feed the great Piedmont ice-sheet are above the snow line, and the debris they carry only appears at the surface after the ice descends to the region where the annual waste is in excess of the annual supply. The stones and dirt previously contained in the glacier are then concentrated at the surface owing to the melting of the ice. This is the history of all of the moraines on the glacier. They are formed of the debris brought out of the moraines by the tributary Alpine glacier, and concentrated at the surface by reason of the melting of the ice.

Malaspina glacier in retreating has left irregular hillocks of coarse debris which are now densely forest-covered. These deposits do not form a continuous terminal moraine, however, but a series of irregular ridges and hills having a somewhat common trend. They indicate a slow general retreat without prolonged halts. The heaps of debris left as the ice front retreated have a general parallelism with the present margin of the glacier and are pitted with lake basins, but only their higher portions are exposed above the general sheet of sand and gravel spread out by streams draining the glacier.

The blocks of stone forming the moraines now resting on the