June-October 1881, Cruise of the Corwin, Part II Image 177

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1881
• Subjects: John Muir; journals; drawings; writings; travel; journaling; naturalist; Tundra
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2179; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/3178/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

the accumulation of tundra moss and humus would eventually check the waste. As it is, the formation will not last much longer, a thousand years, or two thousand, perhaps. Mingled with the true glacial ice are masses of dirty stratified ice, made up of layers of clear ice alternating with layers of mud and sand, mingled with bits of humus and sphagnum and fragments of nearly everything belonging to the tundra. This dirty ice of peculiar stratification never blends into the clean ice, but is simply frozen upon it, fillings cavities and angles, or spread over some slope, and has its origin simply in the freezing of oozing films of clear or dirty water from the broken edge of the tundra above, and is, of course, comparatively a recent formation which is going on every fall and spring when frosts https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/3178/thumbnail.jpg