Siberia and the exile system . position which we had previously occupied. The KatiinEiver, which, from above, had looked like a narrow, dirtywhite ribbon that a child could step across, proved to be atoiTent thirty or forty feet wide, with a current almost deepand strong enough to sweep away a horse and rider. Themain glacier, which I had taken to be about three hundred BRIDLE PATHS OF THE ALTAI 225 feet wide, proved to have a width of more than half a mile;and its central moraine, which had looked to me like a stripof black sand piled up to the height of six or seven feet likea long furnace d
Siberia and the exile system . position which we had previously occupied. The KatiinEiver, which, from above, had looked like a narrow, dirtywhite ribbon that a child could step across, proved to be atoiTent thirty or forty feet wide, with a current almost deepand strong enough to sweep away a horse and rider. Themain glacier, which I had taken to be about three hundred BRIDLE PATHS OF THE ALTAI 225 feet wide, proved to have a width of more than half a mile;and its central moraine, which had looked to me like a stripof black sand piled up to the height of six or seven feet likea long furnace dump, proved to be an enormous mass of. gigantic rocks, three or four miles long, and from 300 to400 feet wide, piled up on the glacier in places to the heightof 75 feet. Mr. Frost estimated the width of this glacier attwo-thirds of a mile, and the extreme height of the moraineat 100 •Jl(; SIBERIA I took tlio photojiTaphic apparatus, and in the course ofan hour and an lialf sueeeeded in (limV)ing up the centralnioraini about two miles towards the foot of the great ieefall; l»ul hy that time 1 was tired out and dripping withperspiration. I passed many wide crevasses into whichwere running streams of water from the surface of theglacier; and judging from the duration of the sound madeby stones that I dropped into some of them, they must havehad a depth of a hundred feet, perhaps much more. Thiswas only one of eleven glaciers that I counted from thesunnnit of the high ridge which divides the water-shed ofthe Irtish from that of the Ob. Seven glaciers descendfrom the two main peaks alone. We spent all the remainder o
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectsiberiarussiadescrip
