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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/300

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296
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
Fig. 3. West half of Hubbard Glacier, discharging icebergs into Disenchantment Bay. Mt. Hubbard in right background. Panorama with Fig. 4.

stagnant ice of the detached bulb of an adjacent glacier whose parti-colored crescentic moraines have led us to call it the Variegated Glacier. Ice underlies all this dark-colored area, however, where moraine mantles the quiescent and melting ice tongue in which there are numerous lakelets. The Hubbard Glacier is exceptional in having a small proportion of medial and lateral moraines, perhaps partly because it is so crevassed. Its surface is clear and attractive and its sea cliffs almost entirely snowy white.

The Ice Cliffs and Icebergs

The foreground of berg-dotted fiord, the silvery ice cliff (Fig. 7), the sea of serac and crevasse behind, and the mountain background rising to 8,000 and 10,000 feet within ten miles of sea-level, form a scene never to be forgotten. One might not presume to too great familiarity with this lordly glacier, however, for an approach to within a half mile of the ice cliff, even in a seaworthy dory, means danger of capsizing in the iceberg-generated waves from the cliff or from overturning bergs. The formation of icebergs from the glacier as seen at safer distances is of fascinating interest. The dazzling white cliff (Fig. 8) with its tints of blue and green in the crevasses suddenly crumbles as if the foundation of one of the castellated ice towers were suddenly removed. Liquid silver seems to slip for minutes from the cliff, then a pinnacle falls with a crash. Instantly the water in front of the glacier, even if clear of bergs a moment before, is filled with white ice fragments, while blue and green and dirty-black icebergs, released from the submerged part of the cliff, rise through the pack of small bergs, casting