Connecticut western news., 1888-05-09
AMERICAN GLACIERS.
A Sublime Feature in the Noun
 tain Landscape of the North.
Americas Icy Giant the "Great
 Glacier of the SelkirkS."

Americas Icy Giant, the "Great
 Glacier of the Selkirks."
 The United States is just a degree or so too far south to bc able to support glaciers of any account, although some of it's mountain ranges ars lofty. Upon the Cascade Range of Oregon and Washington territory many glaciers of good size exist, and a few Ie9p ants are found in tho. Sierra Nevada ant1si1A northern branch of the Rockies called the Wind River range.
 From the Canadian boundary north ward, however, the whole of the intri. cato mountain system covering British Columbia is studded with glaciers, which are encountered at less and less elevation as you go north ward, until, in tho gorge of the Skeena river and the fords of the Alaskan coast, they descend into the very sea. Tho whole breadth of these mountains is now traversed by the Canadian Pa cific railway, and from the car wind ows dozens of glaciers are plainly visible. They begin with the ascent of the east ern slope of the Rocky mountains, and only disappear when the coast range has been left behind, and the Pacific is almost in sight, 500 miles west of the first experience. In tho Rockies the ice is restricted to the bare summit re- zion, and nowhere (at least near the railway) descends below timber line. In the Selkirk and Gold ranges, at tho sources of the Columbia river, west of the Rockies, however, the ice reaches far down into the dense forests of gi- gantic cedar and fir, which cover the valleys and lower part of the peaks.
 The most extensive of all these gla- ciers occupies very lofty plateau at the summit of the magnificent Selkirk mountains, just west of tho railway pass, and sends down huge arms into several radiating ravincs. This plateau, which Is scores of miles in extent, and en- circled by peaks that rise far into the realms of perpetual winter, is wholly covered by a snow field, underlaid with solid ice of great depth, and the "Great Glacier of the Selkirks," together with several others visible from the cars, are only overfows of this wide mer de gace, pushed through gaps in the rim of cliffs, and forming outlets for the con stantly augmented congelation.
 Within mile of the foot of the Great Glacier stands the railway station called Glacier. This is little moro than a hotel, which has been built by tho rail- way company for the accommodation of tourists, and is most excellently main tained. It stands halfway up an enor- nous ravinc, which below sinks into a pit some miles in diameter, whence the Illicilliwast River affords the railway passage out of the mountains westward, and which is surrounded by snowy and grandly outlined peaks. Down this | Idf1uO COuCS dA upCtuOuS AANOA "AOo0 water, like that of nearly all the other streams in these mountains, is white as milk, declaring its glacial birth; and up the banks of this most romantic stream, through forest of trees, some of which are more than 250 feet in height, good path leads to the foot of the glacier.
 DeeIly ensconced below in the green forest, and overshad owed above by gi- gantic walls and pinuacles, dark, snow streaked rock, the glacier forms a sub- lime feature in the mountain landscape from many distant points of view; but when one comes suddenly cut of the woods at point in the path only 500 yards from the ice, the scene that bursts upon his vision is most impress sive. Between two prodigious mount aims, whose splintered battlements are unreieved by anything less stern than patches of snow, lies slope of ice ten miles in length and third of that in width. It is broadest at the top, where it rests in jagged outline against the sky some 20OO feet above your stand point, then diminishes somewhat toward its rounded, convex forefoot, so that its whole shape is that of saddle flap. At tho top the ice has broken into a per- feet chaos as it fell over the steep rim of the plateau; but lower down, where the slope is easier, it's sur face shows almost un broken and billowy outlines, conforming to the trough of its bed. The general color is grayish- white, the delicate grad ations of which mark tho undulating variations of the surface; but the broken masses at the crest, the numerous crevasses or cracks which deeply seam its surface in ' all directions Out most often crosswise) and the profound rifts and breakages where the icc steadily breaks down at the foot, are vivid blue, or in some lights clear grass green. But these colors and gradatlons of tint vary with every attenuation of sunlight and cloud shadow. At each side of the glacier are great ridges of broken rocks and powders (moraiaes), that upon the left 1 beinp narticui arly Drom1nent In front