Every one about camp having plenty of work to occupy him through the day, I started out early on the morning of July 2, with only "Bud" and "Tweed" for companions. My objects were to reconnoiter the country to the westward, to learn what I could concerning its geology and glaciers, and to choose a line of march toward Mount St. Elias. To the north of our camp, and about a mile distant, rose a densely wooded hill about 300 feet high, with a curving outline, convex southward. This hill had excited my curiosity on first catching sight of the shore, and I decided to make it my first study. Its position at the mouth of a steep gorge in the hills beyond, down which a small glacier flowed, suggested that it might be an ancient moraine, deposited at a time when the ice-stream advanced farther than at present. My surprise therefore was great when, after forcing my way through the dense thickets, I reached the top of the hill, and found a large kettle-shaped depression, the sides of which were solid walls of ice fifty feet high. This showed at once that the supposed hill was really the extremity of a glacier, long dead and deeply buried beneath forest-covered débris. In the bottom of the kettle-like depression lay a pond of muddy water, and, as the ice-cliffs about the lakelet melted in the warm sunlight, miniature avalanches of ice and stones, mingled with sticks and bushes that had been undermined, frequently rattled down its sides and splashed into the waters below. Further examination revealed the fact that scores of such kettles are scattered over the surface of the buried glacier. This ice-stream is that designated the _Galiano glacier_ on the accompanying map. Continuing on my way toward the mouth of the gorge in the {90} mountains above, I forced my way for nearly a mile through dense thickets, frequently making wide detours to avoid the kettle holes. At length the vegetation became less dense, and gave place to broad open fields of rocks and dirt, covering the glacier from side to side. This débris was clearly of the nature of a moraine, as the ice could be seen beneath it in numerous crevasses; but no division into marginal or medial moraines could be distinguished. It is really a thin, irregular sheet of comminuted rock, together with angular masses of sandstone and shale, the largest of which are ten or fifteen feet in diameter. When seen from a little distance the débris completely conceals the ice and forms a barren, rugged surface, the picture of desolation. After traversing this naked area the clear ice in the center of the gorge was reached. All about were wild cliffs, stretching up toward the snow-covered peaks above; several cataracts of ice, formed by tributary glaciers descending through rugged, highly inclined channels, were in sight; while the snow-fields far above gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight, and now and then sent down small avalanches to awaken the echoes of the cliffs and fill the still air with a Babel of tongues.