File:Our young folks (serial) (1865) (14596184878).jpg

Identifier: ouryoungfolksser8112trow (find matches)
Title: Our young folks (serial)
Year: 1865 (1860s)
Authors: Trowbridge, J. T. (John Townsend), 1827-1916 Hamilton, Gail, 1833-1896 Larcom, Lucy, 1824-1893
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Publisher: (Boston : Ticknor and Fields)
Contributing Library: Information and Library Science Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Digitizing Sponsor: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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ked. What causes rivers ? The fall of rain, I suppose. Well, the fall of snow makes glaciers. Snow accumulates in enormousquantities in Arctic regions and on lofty mountains, and gradually changesto ice by its own pressure. The summit of Mont Blanc is one mass ofice and snow some two hundred feet thick ; and, what is remarkable, thismass does not seem to increase at all in thickness year after year. Yetfresh snow is constantly accumulating there. On all the other four hundred * Readers interested in pursuing the subject are referred to that admirable little book, MountainAdventures, published by Charles Scribner & Co., in their Illustrated Library of Wonders. 1872.) Mountains and Glaciers. HS great peaks of the Alps the same thing occurs. The line of permanent snowis about nine thousand feet above the sea-level; above that, even in ourhottest summer weather, the winter is eternal. Now, what becomes of allthat snow, since it cannot melt and run down in rivers ? It is forever press-
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vol. viti. — xo. in. Rescue of tha Porter.IO 146 Mountains and Glaciers. (March, ing and sliding down, or tumbling in avalanches, and crowding into thegreat gorges of the mountains, which it fills as rivers fill their beds in thelower world. The vast bodies of ice formed in this way are the glaciers, andthey are in fact stupendous rivers of ice3 subject to the same laws whichgovern the flow of ordinary rivers. Do they run ? Yes, although their motion is so slow as to be almost imperceptible.Their average rate is perhaps two or three hundred feet a year; yet somemove much faster than that, and some more slowly. They bring down intheir course, stretched in endless lines along their sides, immense quantities,sometimes huge masses, of rocks and stones from the mountains. Theglaciers of the polar regions push out into the sea, where mountainous frag-ments break off, and float away as icebergs. The glaciers of the Alps flowdown far below the line of permanent snow, into the valleys, where

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