ome conglomerate when cemented by the action of chemicals in
water. The finer sandy particles become sandstone. The fine mud, which
deposits last, eventually hardens into shale.

Shale has many varieties, but is principally hardened clay; it tends to
split into slate-like plates each the thickness of its original deposit.
It is usually dull brown or slate color, but sometimes, as in Glacier
National Park and the Grand Canyon, shows a variety of more or less
brilliant colors and, by weathering, a wide variety of kindred tints.

Sandstone, which forms wherever moving water or wind has collected
sands, and pressure or chemical action has cemented them, is usually
buff, but sometimes is brilliantly colored.

The processes of Nature have mixed the earth's scenic elements in
seemingly inextricable confusion, and the task of the geologist has
been colossal. Fortunately for us, the elements of scenery are few, and
their larger combinations broad and simple. Once the mind has grasped
the outline and the processes, and the eye has learned to distinguish
elements and recognize forms, the world is recreated for us.

XIII

GLACIERED PEAKS AND PAINTED SHALES

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, NORTHWESTERN MONTANA. AREA, 1,534 SQUARE MILES

I

To say that Glacier National Park is the Canadian Rockies done in Grand
Canyon colors is to express a small part of a complicated fact. Glacier
is so much less and more. It is less in its exhibit of ice and snow.
Both are dying glacial regions, and Glacier is hundreds of centuries
nearer the end; no longer can it display snowy ranges in August and
long, sinuous Alaska-like glaciers at any time. Nevertheless, it has its
glaciers, sixty or more of them perched upon high rocky shelves, the
beautiful shrunken reminders of one-time monsters. Also it has the
precipice-walled cirques and painted, lake-studded valleys which these
monsters left for the enjoyment of to-day.

It is these cirques and valleys which constitute Glacier's unique
feature, which make it incomparable of its kind. Glacier's innermost
sanctuaries of grandeur are comfortably accessible and intimately
enjoyable for more than two months each summer. The greatest places of
the Canadian Rockies are never accessible comfortably; alpinists may
clamber over their icy crevasses and scale their slippery heights in
August, but the usual traveller will view their noblest spectacles from
hotel porches or valley trails.

This comparison