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twg_000012927600 | there are here, to send hundreds of cars into that park on any pleasant day. The automobilists will be wise to accept their privilege of access to the foot of the glacier, and use it with care, too. Several serious accidents have already occurred, and if greater care is not exercised, the Interior Department will apply the Yellowstone rule, at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927601 | least to the extent of stopping all cars at Longmires. [Illustration: Copyright, , By E. S. Curtis. Miss Fay Fuller exploring a crevasse.] [Illustration {p.}: Copyright , By A. H. Barnes. Ice Cave, Paradise Glacier.] Questions like this, involving conflict between the interests of a class and the vital needs of the Park as a public institution, {p.} give especial | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927602 | emphasis to the recommendation made by Secretary Ballinger on his last annual report. Owing to the great number and extent of the National Parks, and the inefficiency of the present "perfunctory policy" in their administration, Mr. Ballinger asked Congress to put the management of these institutions under a Bureau of National Parks, conducted by a competent commissioner, and organized for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927603 | efficient field administration and careful inspection of all public work and of the conduct of concessionaries. Regarding the need of such a systematic and scientific organization for the development of the parks, he says: A definite policy for their maintenance, supervision and improvement should be established, which would enable them to be gradually opened up for the convenience of tourists | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927604 | and campers and for the careful preservation of their natural features. Complete and comprehensive plans for roads, trails, telegraph and telephone lines, sewer and water systems, hotel accommodations, transportation, and other conveniences should be made before any large amount of money is expended. The treatment of our national parks, except as regards the Yellowstone, has not heretofore had the benefit | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927605 | of any well-considered or systematic plans. In all of them the road and trail problems for public travel and convenience to enable tourists to obtain the benefits of scenic beauties are primary, but sewage, water, and electric-power problems are after all of equal importance. [Illustration: Fairy Falls in Goat Lick Basin, below Stevens Glacier.] In line with Secretary Ballinger's report, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927606 | Senator Flint of California introduced a bill authorizing the creation of such a bureau in the Interior Department. The bill failed to get through at the last session, but I am informed by Senator Jones that it will be reintroduced. Its purpose is of great public importance, and the indorsement of the very intelligent directors of the Sierra Club in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927607 | California argues well for its form. Every person interested in the development of our National Parks to fullest usefulness and the proper conservation of their natural beauty should work for the passage of the bill. [Illustration {p.}: Copyright, , By E. S. Curtis. Gibraltar and its Neighbors, showing a mile of the deeply crevassed ice-field inside the angle of which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927608 | the great crag is the apex. On the left are Cowlitz Cleaver and the Bee-Hive; on the right, Cathedral Rocks.] {p.} [Illustration: Crossing Carbon Glacier. On the ice slopes, it is customary to divide a large party into companies of ten, with an experienced alpinist at the head of each. Note the medial moraines on the glacier.] III. THE STORY | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927609 | OF THE MOUNTAIN. I asked myself, How was this colossal work performed? Who chiseled these mighty and picturesque masses out of a mere protuberance of earth? And the answer was at hand. Ever young, ever mighty, with the vigor of a thousand worlds still within him, the real sculptor was even then climbing up the eastern sky. It was he | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927610 | who planted the glaciers on the mountain slopes, thus giving gravity a plough to open out the valleys; and it is he who, acting through the ages, will finally lay low these mighty monuments, * * * so that the people of an older earth may see mould spread and corn wave over the hidden rocks which at this moment | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927611 | bear the weight of the Jungfrau.--_John Tyndall: "Hours of Exercise in the Alps."_ The life of a glacier is one eternal grind.--_John Muir._ Our stately Mountain, in its youth, was as comely and symmetrical a cone as ever graced the galaxy of volcanic peaks. To-day, while still young as compared with the obelisk crags of the Alps, it has already | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927612 | taken on the venerable and deeply-scarred physiognomy of a veteran. It is no longer merely an overgrown boy among the hills, but, cut and torn by the ice of centuries, it is fast assuming the dignity and interest of a patriarch of the mountains. [Illustration: Copyright, , By E. S. Curtis. Reflection Lake, below Pinnacle Peak and the Mountain.] To | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927613 | some, no doubt, the smooth, youthful contours of an active volcano seem more beautiful than the rugged grandeur of the Weisshorn. The perfect cone of Mt. St. Helens, until recently in eruption, pleases them more than the broad dome of Mt. Adams, rounded by an explosion in the unknown past. But for those who love nature and the story written | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927614 | upon its {p.} face, mountains have character as truly as men, and they show it in their features as clearly. [Illustration {p.}: Looking up from Cowlitz Chimneys to Gibraltar and the summit. , Crater and Columbia's Crest. , Peak Success. , Upper snow fields of Nisqually Glacier. , Gibraltar Rock. , Cowlitz Cleaver. , Cathedral Rocks. , Little Tahoma. , | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927615 | Cowlitz Glacier. , Ingraham Glacier, emptying into the Cowlitz.] [Illustration: Divide of Paradise and Stevens Glaciers. Once probably separated by a chine of rock, they are now one save for a slight elevation in their bed, which turns them respectively toward Paradise Valley and Stevens Canyon.] [Illustration: Old Moraine of Stevens Glacier. Now comparatively small and harmless, this glacier did | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927616 | heavy work in its prime. Witness, Stevens Canyon (p. ) and this huge pile of debris, showing that some time ago the glacier, finding a cliff in its way, cut it down and dumped it here.] Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the monarch of the Cascades. No longer the huge conical pimple which a volcano erected on the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927617 | earth's crust, it bears upon it the history of its own explosion, which scattered its top far over the landscape, and of its losing battle with the sun, which, employing the heaviest of all {p.} tools, is steadily destroying it. It has already lost a tenth of its height and a third of its bulk. The ice is cutting deeper | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927618 | and deeper into its sides. Upon three of them, it has excavated great amphitheaters, which it is ceaselessly driving back toward the heart of the peak. As if to compensate for losses in size and shapeliness, the Mountain presents the most important phenomena of glacial action to be seen in the United States. [Illustration: Climbers preparing for a night at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927619 | Camp Muir (altitude , feet), in order to get an early start for the summit. This is on the Cowlitz Cleaver, below Gibraltar. John Muir, the famous mountain climber, selected this spot as a camp in . A stout cabin should be built here to shelter climbers.] [Illustration: The Bee-Hive, a landmark on Cowlitz Cleaver, below Gibraltar.] In its dimensions, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927620 | however, it is still one of the world's great peaks. The Rainier National Park, eighteen miles square--as large as many counties in the East--has an elevation along its western and lowest boundary averaging four thousand feet above sea level. Assuming a diameter for the peak of only twenty miles, the {p.} area occupied by this creature of a volcano exceeds | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927621 | three hundred square miles. Of its vast surface upwards of , acres, or about fifty-one square miles, are covered by glaciers or the fields of perpetual snow which feed them. A straight line drawn through from the end of North Tahoma glacier, on the west side, to the end of White glacier, on the east, would be thirteen miles long. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927622 | The circumference of the crest on the ,-foot contour is nearly seven miles. Its glacial system is, and doubtless has long been, the most extensive on the continent, south of Alaska; it is said by scientists to outrank that of any mountain in Europe. The twelve primary glaciers vary in length from three to eight miles, and from half a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927623 | mile to three miles in width. There are nearly as many "interglaciers," or smaller ice streams which gather their snow supply, not from the nv fields of the summit, but within the wedges of rock which the greater glaciers have left pointing upward on the higher slopes. [Illustration: Mazama Club on Cowlitz Chimneys, looking across the ice-stream of the Cowlitz | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927624 | Glacier.] [Illustration: Climbing Cowlitz Cleaver to Gibraltar. This hacked and weather-worn spine left by the glaciers forms one wing of a great inverted V, with Gibraltar as its apex. On the other side of it is a drop of several thousand feet to Nisqually Glacier.] The geological story may be told in a few untechnical words. As those folds in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927625 | the earth's crust which parallel the coast were slowly formed by the lateral pressure of sea upon land, fractures often occurred in the general incline thus {p.} created. Through the fissures that resulted the subterranean fires thrust molten rock. In many cases, the expulsion was of sufficient amount and duration to form clearly defined volcanic craters. The most active craters | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927626 | built up, by continued eruptions of lava and ashes, a great series of cones now seen on both sides of the Cordillera, that huge mountain system which borders the Pacific from Behring sea to the Straits of Magellan. Tacoma-Rainier is one of the more important units in this army of volcanic giants. [Illustration: Mazamas rounding Gibraltar--a reminiscence of the ascent | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927627 | by the Portland club in . The precipice rises more than feet above the trail which offers a precarious footing at the head of a steep slope of loose talus.] Unlike some of its companions, however, it owes its bulk less to lava flows than to the explosive eruptions which threw forth bombs and scoriae. It is a mass of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927628 | agglomerates, with only occasional strata of solid volcanic rock. This becomes evident to one who inspects the exposed sides of any of the canyons, or of the great cliffs, Gibraltar Rock, Little Tahoma or Russell Peak. It is made clear in such pictures as are on this page and the next. This looseness of structure accounts for the rapidity with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927629 | which the glaciers are cutting into the peak, and carrying it away. Most of them carry an extraordinary amount of debris, to be deposited in lateral or terminal moraines, or dropped in streams which they feed. They are rivers of rock as well as of ice. [Illustration: Under the walls of Gibraltar.] {p.} That the glaciers of this and every | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927630 | other mountain in the northern hemisphere are receding, and that they are now mere pygmies compared with their former selves, is well known. What their destructive power must have been when their volume was many times greater than now may be judged from the moraines along their former channels. Some of these ridges are hundreds of feet in height. As | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927631 | you go to the Mountain from Tacoma, either by the Tacoma Eastern railway or the Nisqually canyon road, you find them everywhere above the prairies. They are largest on the north side of the Mountain, because there the largest glaciers have been busy. Many of them, on all sides, are covered with forests that must be centuries old. Even now, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927632 | diminished as they are, the glaciers are fast transporting the Mountain toward the sea. Wherever a glacier skirts a cliff, it is cutting into its side, as it cuts into its own bed below. From the overhanging rocks, too, debris falls as a result of "weathering." The daily ebb and flow of frost and heat help greatly to tear down | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927633 | the cliffs. Thus marginal moraines built of the debris begin to form, on the ice, far up the side of the peak. As the glacier advances, driven by its weight and the resistless mass of snow above, it is often joined by another glacier, bringing its own marginal moraines. Where the two meet, a medial moraine results. (See illustrations, pp. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927634 | and .) Some medial moraines are many feet high. Trees are found growing on them. In Switzerland houses are built upon them. Often the debris which they transport, as the ice carries them forward, includes rocks as big as a ship. [Illustration: One of the bedrooms at Camp Muir.] [Illustration {p.}: A perilous position on the edge of a great | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927635 | crevasse. Cowlitz Glacier, near end of Cathedral Rocks.] A glacier's flow varies from a hundred to a thousand feet or more a year, depending upon {p.} its volume, its width, and the slope of its bed. As the decades pass, its level is greatly lowered by the melting of the ice. More and more, earth and rocks accumulate upon the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927636 | surface, as it travels onward, and are scattered over it by the rains and melting snow. At last, in its old age, when far down its canyon, the glacier is completely hidden, save where crevasses reveal the ice. Only at its snout, where it breaks off, as a rule, in a high wall of ice, do we realize how huge | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927637 | a volume and weight it must have, far above toward its sources, or why so many of the crevasses on the upper ice fields seem almost bottomless. [Illustration: Climbing the "Chute," west side of Gibraltar. Here the guides cut steps in the ice.] These hints of the almost inconceivable mass of a glacier, with its millions of millions of tons, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927638 | suggest how much of the Mountain has already been whittled and planed away. But here we may do better than speculate. The original surface of the peak is clearly indicated by the tops of the great rocks which have survived the glacial sculpturing. These rise from one to two thousand feet above the glaciers, which are themselves several thousand feet | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927639 | in depth. The best known of them is the point formed by Gibraltar and the ridges that stretch downward from it, Cowlitz Cleaver and Cathedral Rocks, making a great inverted V. Eastward of this, another V with its apex toward the summit, is called Little Tahoma; and beyond, still another, Steamboat Prow, forming the tip of "The Wedge." Spines of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927640 | rock like these are found on all sides of the peak. They help us to estimate its greater circumference and bulk, before the glaciers had chiseled so deep. [Illustration: Looking from top of Gibraltar to the Summit. Elevation of camera, , feet. In distance is seen the rim of the crater. The route to this is a steady climb, with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927641 | , feet of ascent in one mile of distance. Many detours have to be made to avoid crevasses. Note the big crevasse stretching away on right--a "Bergschrund," as the Swiss call a break where one side falls below the other. The stratification on its side shows in each layer a year's snow, packed into ice.] {p.} But they do even | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927642 | more. Wherever lava flows occurred in the building of the Mountain, strata formed; and such stratification is clearly seen at intervals on the sides of the great rocks just mentioned. Its incline, of course, is that of the former surface. The strata point upward--not toward the summit which we see, but far above it. For this reason the geologists who | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927643 | have examined the artes most closely are agreed that the peak has lost nearly two thousand feet of its height. It blew its own head off! Such explosive eruptions are among the worst vices of volcanoes. Every visitor to Naples remembers how plainly the landscape north of Vesuvius tells of a prehistoric decapitation, which left only a low, broad platform, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927644 | on the south rim of which the little Vesuvius that many of us have climbed was formed by later eruptions, while a part of the north rim is well defined in "Monte Somma." Similarly, here at home, Mt. Adams and Mt. Baker are truncated cones, while, on the other hand, St. Helens and Hood are still symmetrical. Like Vesuvius, too, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927645 | Rainier-Tacoma has built upon the plateau left when it lost its head. Peak Success, overlooking Indian Henry's, and Liberty Cap, the northern elevation, seen from Seattle and Tacoma, are nearly three miles apart on the west side of the broad summit. These are parts of the rim of the old crater. East of the line uniting them, and about two | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927646 | miles from each, the volcano built up an elevation now known as Crater Peak, comprising two small adjacent craters. These burnt-out craters are now filled with snow, and where the rims touch, a big snow-hill rises--the strange creature of eddying winds that sweep up through the great flume cut by volcanic explosion and glacial action in the west side of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927647 | the peak. (See pp. , , and .) [Illustration {p.}: View South from Cowlitz Glacier: elevation, , feet. Seven miles away are the huge eastern peaks of the Tatoosh. The Cascades beyond break in Cispus Pass, and rise, on the left, to the glacier summits called Goat Peaks. The truncated cone of Mt. Adams, more than forty miles away, crowns | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927648 | the sky-line.] {p.} [Illustration: These views show the larger of the two comparatively modern and small craters on the broad platform left by the explosion which decapitated the Peak. Prof. Flett measured this crater, and found it , feet from north to south, and , feet from east to west. The other, much smaller, adjoins it so closely that their | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927649 | rims touch. Together they form an eminence of , feet (Crater Peak), at a distance of about two miles from North Peak (Liberty Cap) and South Peak (Peak Success). At the junction of their rims is the great snow hill (on right of view) called "Columbia's Crest." This is the actual summit. The volcano having long been inactive, the craters | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927650 | are filled with snow, but the residual heat causes steam and gases to escape in places along their rims.] [Illustration {p.}] This mound of snow is the present actual top. Believing it the highest point in the United States south of Alaska, a party of climbers, in , named it "Columbia's Crest." This was long thought to be the Mountain's | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927651 | rightful distinction, for different computations by experts gave various elevations ranging as high as , feet, with none prior to giving less than , feet. Even upon a government map published as late as the height is stated as , feet. In view of this variety of expert opinion, the flattering name, not unnaturally, has stuck, in spite of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927652 | fact that the government geographers have now adopted, for the Dictionary of Altitudes, the height found by the United States Geological Survey in , , feet. That decision leaves the honor of being the loftiest peak between Alaska and Mexico to Mt. Whitney in the California Sierra (, feet). [Illustration: Steam Caves in one of the craters. The residual heat | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927653 | of the extinct volcano causes steam and gases to escape from vents in the rims of the two small craters. Alpinists often spend a night in the caves thus formed in the snow.] {p.} [Illustration: North Peak, named "Liberty Cap" because of its resemblance to the Bonnet Rouge of the French Revolutionists. Elevation, about , feet. View taken from the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927654 | side of Crater Peak. Distance, nearly two miles.] The definitive map of the National Park which was begun last summer by the Geological Survey, with Mr. Francois E. Matthes in charge, will establish the elevations of all important landmarks in the Park. Among these will be the Mountain itself. Whether this will add much, if anything, to the current figure | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927655 | of the Dictionary is uncertain. In any case, the result will not lessen the pride of the Northwest in its great peak. A few feet of height signify nothing. No California mountain masked behind the Sierra can vie in majesty with this lonely pile that rises in stately grandeur from the shores of Puget Sound. [Illustration {p.}: Goat Peaks, glacier | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927656 | summits in the Cascades, southeast of the Mountain. Elevation, about , feet, A branch of the Cowlitz is seen flowing down from the glaciers above.] [Illustration {p.}: Copyright , By W. P. Romans. Spray Park, from Fay Peak, showing the beautiful region between the Carbon and North Mowich Glaciers.] {p.} [Illustration: Ice-bound Lake in Cowlitz Park, with top of Little | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927657 | Tahoma in distance.] [Illustration: Crevasses in Cowlitz Glacier, with waterfall dropping from Cowlitz Park, over basaltic cliffs.] The wide area which the Mountain thrusts far up into the sky is a highly efficient condenser of moisture. Near to the Pacific as it is, its broad summit and upper slopes collect several hundred feet of snow each year from the warm | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927658 | Chinooks blowing in from the west. On all sides this vast mass presses down, hardened into solid granular nv, to feed the twelve primary glaciers. Starting eastward from Paradise Valley, these principal ice-streams are: Cowlitz and Ingraham glaciers; White or White River glacier, largest of all; Winthrop glacier, named in honor of Theodore Winthrop, in whose romance of travel, "The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927659 | Canoe and the Saddle," the ancient Indian name "Tacoma" was first printed; Carbon, North and South Mowich, Puyallup, North and South Tahoma, Kautz and Nisqually glaciers. The most important secondary glaciers, or "interglaciers," rising within the great rock wedges which I have described, are called Interglacier, Frying-Pan, {p.} Stevens, Paradise and Van Trump. All of these are of the true | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927660 | Alpine type; that is, they are moving rivers of ice, as distinguished from "continental glaciers," the ice caps which cover vast regions in the Arctic and Antarctic. [Illustration: Crossing a precipitous slope on White Glacier. Little Tahoma in distance.] In thus naming the glaciers, I have followed the time-honored local usage, giving the names applied by the earliest explorers and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927661 | since used with little variation in the Northwest. There has been some confusion, however, chiefly owing to a recent government map. For instance, in that publication, White glacier, properly so called because it is the main feeder of the White river, was named Emmons glacier, after S. F. Emmons, a geologist who was one of the first to visit it. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927662 | It is interesting to note that in his reports Mr. Emmons himself called this the White River glacier. On the other hand, the map mentioned, after displacing the name White from the larger glacier to which it logically belongs, gave it to the ice-stream feeding another branch of the White river, namely, the glacier always locally called the Winthrop, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927663 | so called by Prof. Russell in his report to the Geological Survey in . [Illustration: Copyright, , By S. C. Smith. Climbing Goat Peaks, in the Cascades, with the Mountain twenty miles away.] [Illustration {p.}: Looking up White Glacier (right), from a point on its lower end, showing vast amount of morainal debris carried down by this glacier. Little Tahoma | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927664 | in middle distance; Gibraltar and Cathedral Rocks on extreme right; "Goat Island" on left. Elevation of camera, about , feet. Note the "cloud banner" which the crag has flung to the breeze.] {p.} [Illustration: The Mountain seen from the top of Cascade range, with party starting west over the forest trails for Paradise.] [Illustration: Great moraine built by Frying-Pan Glacier | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927665 | on side of "Goat Island."] Similarly, North and South Mowich, names of the streams to which they give birth, were miscalled Willis and Edmunds glaciers, after Bailey Willis, geologist, and George F. Edmunds, late United States senator, who visited the Mountain many years ago. The Mowich rivers were so named by the Indians from the fact that, in the great | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927666 | rocks on the northwest side of the peak, just below the summit, they saw the figure of the mowich, or deer. The deer of rock is there still--he may be seen in several pictures in this volume,--and so long as he keeps to his icy pasture it will be difficult to displace his name from the glaciers and rivers below. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927667 | The southern branch of the great Tahoma glacier, locally called South Tahoma glacier, this map renamed Wilson glacier, for A. D. Wilson, Emmons's companion in exploration. Finally, the name of General Hazard Stevens, who, {p.} with Mr. Van Trump, made the first ascent of the peak in , was misplaced, being given to the west branch of the Nisqually, whereas | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927668 | the general usage has fixed the name of that pioneer upon the well-defined interglacier east of the Paradise, and above Stevens canyon, which in its prime it carved on the side of the Mountain. General Stevens himself writes me from Boston that this is the correct usage. [Illustration: Coming around Frying-Pan Glacier, below Little Tahoma.] Such errors in an official | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927669 | document are the more inexcusable because their author ignored local names recognized in the earlier publications of the government and its agents. In such matters, too, the safe principle is to follow local custom where that is logical and established. The new map prepared by Mr. Ricksecker, and printed herewith, returns to the older and better usage. Unless good reason | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927670 | can be shown for departing from it, his careful compilation should be followed. Willis Wall, above Carbon Glacier, appropriately recalls the work of Bailey Willis. The explorations of Emmons and Wilson may well be commemorated by landmarks as yet unnamed, not by displacing fit names long current. In connection with his survey of the Park, Mr. Matthes has been authorized | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927671 | to collect local testimony as to established names within that area, and to invite suggestions as to appropriate names for landmarks not yet definitely named. His report will doubtless go to the National Geographic Board for final decision on the names recommended. Thus, in time, we may hope to see this awkward and confusing tangle in mountain nomenclature straightened out. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927672 | [Illustration: Sunrise above the clouds, seen from Camp Curtis, on the Wedge, (altitude , feet); White Glacier below. This camp was named by the Mountaineers in , in honor of Asahel Curtis, the Seattle climber.] {p.} [Illustration: Looking up from "Snipe Lake," a small pond below Interglacier, to the head of Winthrop Glacier and Liberty Cap.] The written history of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927673 | the Mountain begins with its discovery by Captain George Vancouver. Its first appearance upon a map occurs in Vancouver's well-known report, published in , after his death: "Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and around the World, -." It was in the summer of , shortly after Vancouver had entered the Sound, he tells us, that he first | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927674 | saw "a very remarkable high round mountain, covered with snow, apparently at the southern extremity of the distant snowy range." A few days later he again mentions "the round snowy mountain," "which, after my friend Rear-Admiral Rainier, I distinguished by the name of Mount Rainier." Nearly all of Captain Vancouver's friends were thus distinguished, at the cost of the Indian | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927675 | names, to which doubtless he gave no thought. Sonorous "Kulshan" and unique "Whulge" were lost, in order that we might celebrate "Mr. Baker" and "Mr. Puget," junior officers of Vancouver's expedition. [Illustration: Passing a big crevasse on Interglacier. Sour-Dough Mountains on the right, with Grand Park beyond: St. Elmo Pass in center, Snipe Lake and Glacier Basin in depression.] [Illustration | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927676 | {p.}: View north from Mt. Ruth (part of the Wedge), with Interglacier in foreground, the Snipe Lake country below, Sour-Dough Mountains on right, Grand Park in middle distance, and Mt. Baker, with the summits of the Selkirks, far away in Canada, on the horizon.] {p.} [Illustration: Camp on St. Elmo Pass, north side of the Wedge, between Winthrop Glacier and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927677 | Interglacier. Elevation, , feet. Winthrop Glacier and the fork of White River which it feeds are seen in distance below. The man is Maj. E. S. Ingraham, a veteran explorer of the Mountain, after whom Ingraham Glacier is named.] [Illustration: East face of the Mountain, from south side of the Wedge, showing route to the summit over White Glacier.] Happily, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927678 | the fine Indian name "Tacoma" was not offered up a sacrifice to such obscurity. Forgotten as he is now, Peter Rainier was, in his time, something of a figure. After some ransacking of libraries, I have found a page that gives us a glimpse of a certain hard-fought though unequal combat, in the year , between an American privateer and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927679 | two British ships. It is of interest in connection with "Mount Rainier," the name recognized by the Geographic Board at Washington in as official. On the 8th of July, the -gun ship Ostrich, Commander Peter Rainier, on the Jamaica station, in company with the -gun armed brig Lowestoffe's Prize, chased a large brig. After a long run, the Ostrich brought | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927680 | the brig, which was the American privateer Polly, to action, and, after an engagement of three hours' duration (by which time the Lowestoffe's Prize had arrived up and {p.} taken part in the contest), compelled her to surrender. * * * * Captain Rainier was wounded by a musket ball through the left breast; he could not, however, be prevailed | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927681 | upon to go below, but remained on deck till the close of the action. He was posted, and appointed to command the -gun ship Burford. (_Allen: "Battles of the British Navy,"_ Vol. I., London, ). [Illustration: Admiral Peter Rainier, of the British Navy, in whose honor Captain George Vancouver, in , named the great peak "Mt. Rainier."] Before quitting with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927682 | Vancouver and eighteenth-century history of the Mountain, I note that our peak enjoyed a further honor. Captain Vancouver records an interesting event that took place on the anniversary of King George's birth;--"on which auspicious day," he says, "I had long since designed to take formal possession of all the countries we had lately been employed in exploring, in the name | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927683 | of, and for, His Britannic Majesty, his heirs and successors." And he did! [Illustration: First picture of the Mountain, from Vancouver's "Voyage of Discovery," London, .] After Vancouver's brief mention, and the caricature of our peak printed in his work, literature is practically silent about the Mountain for more than sixty years. Those years witnessed the failure of England's memorable | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927684 | struggle to make good Vancouver's "annexation." Oregon was at last a state. Out of its original area Washington Territory had just been carved. In that year of {p.} came Theodore Winthrop, of the old New England family, who was destined to a lasting and pathetic fame as an author of delightful books and a victim of the first battle of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927685 | the Civil War. Sailing into what is now the harbor of the city of Tacoma, he there beheld the peak. We feel his enthusiasm as he tells of the appeal it made to him. [Illustration: Climbers on St. Elmo Pass, seen from the upper side.] [Illustration: St. Elmo Pass from north side. The name was given by Maj. Ingraham in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927686 | because of a remarkable exhibition of St. Elmo's fire seen here during a great storm. A cabin is needed at this important crossing.] [Illustration: Avalanche Camp (, feet), on the high, ragged chine between Carbon and Winthrop. Carbon Glacier, seen below, has cut through a great range, leaving Mother Mountains on the left and the Sluiskins, right.] We had rounded | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927687 | a point, and opened Puyallop Bay, a breadth of sheltered calmness, when I was suddenly aware of a vast white shadow in the water. What cloud, piled massive on the horizon, could cast an image so sharp in outline, so full of vigorous detail of surface? No cloud, but a cloud compeller. It was a giant mountain dome of snow, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927688 | swelling and seeming to fill the aerial spheres, as its image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water. Only its splendid snows were visible, high in the unearthly regions of clear blue noonday sky. Kingly and alone stood this majesty, without any visible consort, though far to the north and the south its brethren and sisters dominated their realms. Of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927689 | all the peaks from California to {p.} Frazer's River, this one before me was royalest. Mount Regnier[] Christians have dubbed it, in stupid nomenclature perpetuating the name of somebody or nobody. More melodiously the Siwashes call it Tacoma,--a generic term also applied to all snow peaks. Tacoma, under its ermine, is a crushed volcanic dome, or an ancient volcano fallen | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927690 | in, and perhaps not yet wholly lifeless. The domes of snow are stateliest. There may be more of feminine beauty in the cones, and more of masculine force and hardihood in the rough pyramids, but the great domes are calmer and more divine. [Footnote : Winthrop's error was a common one at that time and has remained current till to-day. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927691 | The admiral's grandfather, the Huguenot exile, was "Regnier," but his descendants anglicized the patronymic into "Rainier."] No foot of man had ever trampled those pure snows. It was a virginal mountain, distant from human inquisitiveness as a marble goddess is from human loves. Yet there was nothing unsympathetic in its isolation, or despotic in its distant majesty. Only the thought | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927692 | of eternal peace arose from this heaven-upbearing monument like incense, and, overflowing, filled the world with deep and holy calm. Our lives demand visual images that can be symbols to us of the grandeur or the sweetness of repose. The noble works of nature, and mountains most of all, "have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927693 | being Of the eternal silence." And, studying the light and the majesty of Tacoma, there passed from it and entered into my being a thought and image of solemn beauty, which I could thenceforth evoke whenever in the world I must {p.} have peace or die. For such emotion years of pilgrimage were worthily spent. ("_The Canoe and the Saddle_," | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927694 | published posthumously in ). [Illustration: Russell Peak, from Avalanche Camp, , feet below. Named for Prof. Israel C. Russell, geologist.] [Illustration: Looking up Winthrop Glacier from Avalanche Camp.] [Illustration: Looking across Winthrop Glacier from Avalanche Camp to Steamboat Prow (the Wedge) and St. Elmo Pass. Elevation of camera, , feet.] In the controversy over the Mountain's name, some persons have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927695 | been misled into imaging Winthrop a fabricator of pseudo-Indian nomenclature. But his work bears scrutiny. He wrote before there was any dispute as to the name, or any rivalry between towns to confound partisanship with scholarship. He was in the Territory while Captain George B. McClellan, was surveying the Cascades to find a pass for a railroad. He was in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927696 | close touch with McClellan's party, and doubtless knew well its able ethnologist, George Gibbs, the Harvard man whose works on the Indian languages of the Northwest are the foundation of all later books in that field. Although he first learned it from the Indians, in all likelihood he discussed the name "Tacoma" with Gibbs, who was already collecting material for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927697 | his writings, published in the {p.} report of the Survey and in the "Contributions" of the Smithsonian Institution. Among these are the vocabularies of a score of Indian dialects, which must be mentioned here because they are conclusive as to the form, meaning and application of the name. [Illustration {p.}: View south from the Sluiskin Mountains across Moraine Park to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927698 | the head of Carbon Glacier. Elevation of camera, , feet. Moraine Park, below, was until recently the bed of an interglacier. On the extreme left, Avalanche Camp and Russell Peak are seen between Carbon and Winthrop Glaciers.] [Illustration {p.}: Portion of Spray Park, with north-side view of the Mountain, showing Observation Rock and timber line. Elevation of camera, , feet.] | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012927699 | [Illustration: Climbing the sracs of Winthrop Glacier.] In his vocabulary of the Winatsha (Wenatchee) language, Gibbs entered: "T'koma, snow peak." In that of the Niswalli (Nisqually), he noted: "Takob, the name of Mt. Rainier." "T'kope," Chinook for white, is evidently closely allied. Gibbs himself tells us that the Northwestern dialects treated b and m as convertible. "Takob" is equivalent to | 60 | gutenberg |
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