Omaha daily bee., 1903-03-29

- ness the water of the glaciers
E1k&An that slip ceaselessly down the
sides of Mount Rainier, Tacoma,
the nourishing breast" as it was
called in the "aborigines" vivid language,
and as westerners are coming to designate
it; to carry the power generated by melt
ing SHOWS along wires of aluminium to the
rich levels in which the young cities of
Seattle, Tacoma and Everett are growing
up to greatness, and there to apply 1t to
all the various uses of industry and trans
rortation-this is the unique enterprise
If engineering skill which is about to make
possible the utilization of the immense
forces stored on the ice-bound summit of
zone of the noblest and widest mountain
heights in the United States, to the perm
anent advantage of a great and rich area
upon which men are now settling like
swarm Of ~locusts; where rapidly growing
towns are teeming with new enterprises and
aspirations. The power that will upbuild
the future industries of the cities along
Puget ~Sound-cities like Tacoma, Seattle,
Everett, Olympia and Wbatcom-is des-
tined very largely to be drawn from the
unnumbered acres of ice about the noun
tain top-a store OF power unexhausted
and ineXhaustible.
The mountainous districts thus 10 be
drawn upon for power is respondent alike
in it's beauties and in its opportunities of
beneAcence. From the streets of Tacoma,
forty-ive miles away, Mount Rainier
makes an impressive break on the horizon
line, the foot hills that intervene serving
to moderate the abruptness of the glorious
central peak, and giving 1t such a base
as such a cone deserves-a wide green
foundation beneath a symmetrical peak of
volcanic rock and snow. A huge mountain
it is. II the mere dirt and rock composing
it, properly disposed. could be taken up
and dropped into the Atlantic ocean, a
complete causeway would be formed twenty
feet wide at the top, with a slope that
would stand firmly, on which an automobile
list might ride dry wheeled from New York
to Southampton.
Mount Rainier is still a living volcano;
one of the three craters in its summit at
all times belches forth hot steam and
affords grateful warmth to the few people
who have dared pass a night there at an
altitude of more than 1880 feet. Sixteen
slipping glaciers glorify its summit,
descending to no great height above sea
level and dripping with their perpetual
1ow of melting water. The Puyallup river
scene of this new. and novel engineering
feat, for which the stone & Webster cleo
trical management OF Boston stand spon>
sor, is an example of the outpouTings OF
these fields Of ice, drawing, with it's trib-
utary, the Mowich, upon five great gla-
cieTs-the Puyallup, the Carbon, the North
Mowich, the South Mowich and the North
Tacoma. The area comPrehended by these
glaciers exceeds the area of the city of
Seattle; thirty square miles of ice vary
ing in thickness from 100 to 1900 feet.
The streams composing the Puyallup flow
from the northeast side Of the mountain
toward Puget Sound, along a slope that
for the first few miles is very precipitous
and full of falls. Above the point Of their
exit from the glacier extends the frozen
wilderness-deep snow piled heavily about
the crown of the mountain and through its
constant pressure renewing the eVer-mov-
ing, everlasting, ever-bTeaking ice-pack
below. These glaciers-like all others in
every part OF the world-are unresting,
beating ceaselessly down the slopes at the
rate of an inch TO two inches or more
daily, according to the weather and the
season. The ice is so beautifully clear
that objects may be discerned through
blocks twenty feet In thickness. FREE
quently the ice cracks with tremendous
d%etonatioDs. and once In a great while
one Of the most spectacular things in
nature happens over the Wallis Wall, a
sheer pTecipice Of the mountain. About
northwest slope OF the mountain. Above
this precipice hangs the Carbon glacier,
$50 feet thick, pushing inch by inch along
the verge until now and then a projecting
mass OF thousands upon thousands Of tons