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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1889)
THE WEST SHORE. fOOTI'RINTa OF OLAOIERS IN WASHINGTON. D I'M NO the age of glaciers the general level of the sound country wu Kirae two thousand feet higher than at prewut Noue of tbo intervening range between the iummit of the Casoado range and the ocean coast were over two-thirdi the height of the main range. Gradually the mow and ice filled all the valleys where now it Puget sound, between the Cosst aud Cascade rauges. Still it kept accumulat ing until it overtoiled all the intervening ranges, and Mended from the iummit of the main range an uubroken waste of mow aud ice ail thousand feet thick, that covered the top of all the intervening mountains from two thousand to four thousand teet deep. What a weight was that I What a tremen dous foroe it might exert on the surface of the earth if there was only a power great enough to set it in motion I Just think of it. less than thirty-five cubic fort of this maw would weigh a ton. In a cubio mile there are one hundred and forty-seven billion nine hundred and seventy-nine million nine bnndred and fifty-two thousaud cubio feet, There would be over four million tons to the cubio mile. Hut this mass wu over a mile deep aud covered the whole country, two hundred niilea from the crest of tbo mountains to the sea. In that two hundred miles it descended an average, of thirty feet to the mile, some five or ten times the average descent x mile of our great riv ers. Suppose one hundred miles from its starting xiut it eueouutered an oUtacle. Were this mass set in motion, a dead weight of four hundred billion tons would I brought to bear on a single mile front to crush that oUtruction, and this force might be kept up for million years. What could set such a pow erful forc free? What could start such a mass? Simply a gentle sephyr, the balmy Chinook wind. Then, as now, it came across the Pacific, and the oulhwett fw of the terrible glacier had to eneoun ler iU rival. This kept one surface free, Yom by year, freriicg and melting, aud the tremendous weight pushing U-hind it kept it moving toward, the sea, Mountains now over two thousand fivt high were not able to turn it a degree from its course. Mount Constitution, two thousand four hundred feet high, Is channel! ,Dl growV((j j( ummjl , glacier, u well as a hill a huudred feet high. Ytm the mouth of the Chehalis and the Ci.lura-l-ia, back to the summit of the Cascade rauce, the rouU. traveled by the ic can te traxl a. if it were made but yesWd.y, and everywhere its track is from tbs mvrtheast to the southwest. It moved solidly ..OiiUfaceU.U.e ,h. Chiuk .Tbyr, until U HaheJ la U,. ,Uu,.gU Hut the hr 'did coer unaided Other cau were at work to aid in the struggle. The forces evolved, jut before the glacial period, in throwing out those vast sheets of basalt in Eastern Washington, in capping the Cas cade range, and in elevating Western Washington had spent themselves. Unable to hold up the weight that was pressing from the mountains and ice com bined they began to settle; but before giving up the struggle they made a last effort in throwing out vol canio bastions to the westward of the mountains they had raised to defend these mountains from the tides and currents of the ocean, that was ever seeking to u tear them down. To those who have seen the forces exerted by water, flowing under pressure in hydranlie mining, it is submitted that nature presents a force as great perhaps as the glacier, which soience has yet scarcely tried to measure. Twioe every twenty.four boars a mass of water seven thousand miles wide and five miles high, by the tides, is hurled against the Pacifio coast of the United States. This ocean also sends a current, flowing day and night, for millions of years of time, five miles deep the width of the shore line a current ceaselessly beating on our shores. None of this force is wasted. It is all treas ured np and manifested, perhaps, ages afterward in the volcano of the earthquake. May not this foroe of tides and ocean currents, in part, account for the faults and sinking of the surface on both the Rocky and Cascade ranges? Is there not also a relation be tween these forces and the fact that volcanoes are nearly always on the ocean slope of mountains? Those of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges are almost without an exception in that position. A few words more about the glacier before other matters are treated of. Right in the center of the glacier track, extending across the country from near the Carbonado to Seabeck, on Hood's canal, and crossing the sound in the vicinity of the narrows, once existed a mountain ranee which tried to do bat tle with the glacier and perished in the struggle. Its relentless rival ground the mountain down to its base, and its rnins doom to everlasting sterilitv a reeion of country about fifty miles square around the upper souna. nen a river flows down a mountain side its head is filled with coarse rocka and honkers, but these decrease in size as a more level country it reached, until finally nothing is found in its bed but fine sand and clav. A dacier arts aimiUrl tn a river. only it never stops to sort the partioles it works upon UUPB ter in a river. When the glacier it running over hills and mnnnbiins eiriilii'ncf rrtrll and other obstacles to its progress, it leaves the ground ewn wan come gravei boulders, but the far ther it moves over a comparatively level country the n it n s At. ... la - w gravei becomes, so that the gravel andee- fierce and Thurston counties becomes tu