The Alaska daily empire., 1915-09-21

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 The glittering pinnacles and the beetling front of the Taku Glacier at- tract the attention Of tho average per son who goes up the TalSu Inlet toI its head. but the fine icestream lying at the left a mile or SO from the water scarcely receives passing notice If any inquiry is made, the answer is, that's the Dead Glacier, which ends the matter
 The fact is. that, outside of the beauty of the fine frontage of the sea-breaking glacier called the Taku, the Norris is the most easily ap- preached and studied and in many of it's phenomenon is the most interest ing of the two. As far as to its be- ing dead, it is just as alive, has just as great speed, in all probability, although neither have been accurate ly measured. and is just as deeply crevassed. Along it's front. of about two and one-half miles or more, there are some of the most interesting of evidences of glacial action and of worldmaking by the means of ice work as is to be seen anywhere in the mountains of any land.
 It is an alpine glacier, of the very true type. of the kind found In other mountain countries. Not being for tunate enough to have the water of the Taku Inlet continue farther up the canyon as it does the other for over two hundred years the Norris glacier has not come down to the sea.
 When Vancouver visited the inlet he states that he found the end of the passage completely blocked by walls of ice. He Is interpreted by some as meaning that the ice came down to the water not only at the Taku Glacier but at the Norris and on Taku river. but this is not req sonable construction of the state ment. The trees of the moraine of the Norris Glacier and in the valley of the Taiu are over one hundred years old, probably from two to three hundred years. and it is nearly one hundred years after the ice recedes and bares the ground that the spruce trees begin to grow So the ice could not have reached the water at that time in front of the Norris Glacier
 The name was given in 1886, for pr. Basil Norris. U. S. N, and when the Secretary of the Treasury. Will liam Windom. visited Che coast in 1890. it was renamed tho Windom Glacier in honor of his visit. The .Taku was at the same time renamed the Foster in honor of Secretary John w. Foster of the State Depart ment. but in neither case has the new name replaced the one before given. and today they stand on the records of the government as the Nor ris Glacier and the Taigu Glacier.
 The tourist boats usually take a 0eeting turn in front of the Taku and then steam away as fast as possible. not given the chance formerly afford ed when they visited the Muir Glac- fer. of going ashore and really in- specting Q glacial stream. They have systematically reduced the advantag- es given to those visiting the ice streams year after year until now 1t is hardly an excuse afforded that is called a visit
 Were they to land on the moraine of the Norris. however, and visit its wide expanse, they would find strange things written in the gravels. In places they would find masses of peat, sometimes half formed into coal, on the debris thrown out by the ice, and at one place at the edge of the ice front there is an old moraine that has not been covered by the ice for from 75 to 100 years. On this nor aine are small cottonwood trees grow ing. also O few spruce struggling to get @ foothold. while huckleberry and other bushes are living among the mosses that cover the ground. Two years ago the front of the ice was advancing and covering some of these trees that had been growing several years, showing that the supply at its source was greater than the waste by the melting at the front and it was again covering ground that 1t lost years ago. In this old moraine are to be found circular holes, twenty to thirty feet in diameter and from five to ten feet deep. There are no outlets to these, they being verita- ble potholes. Some of them are full of water while others are dry. The origin of these is a matter of specu- lation until the front of the glacier farther south is visited There the explanation is plainly to be seen.
 Glaciers have habits The things that one glacier does, another one may not The Norris has the habit of forming a glacial lake under the ice with the accumulation of melting on the surface finding it's way down to a point where it is confined until the hydraulic pressure bursts away the barrier. Then 1t comes down to the sea with vast rush that puts the Jamestown flood to shame, piles acres of gravel over the glacial plain in front and buries masses of ice. thousands of tons in weight in the