ut the rocks, the mountains, and the
cirques besides. The glaciers of old penetrated the most colorful depths
of earth's skin, the very ancient Algonkian strata, that from which a
part of the Grand Canyon also was carved. At this point, the rocks
appear in four differently colored layers. The lowest of these is called
the Altyn limestone. There are about sixteen hundred feet of it, pale
blue within, weathering pale buff. Whole yellow mountains of this rock
hang upon the eastern edge of the park. Next above the Altyn lies
thirty-four hundred feet of Appekunny argillite, or dull-green shale.
The tint is pale, deepening to that familiar in the lower part of the
Grand Canyon. It weathers every darkening shade to very dark
greenish-brown. Next above that lies twenty-two hundred feet of Grinnell
argillite, or red shale, a dull rock of varying pinks which weathers
many shades of red and purple, deepening in places almost to black.
There is some gleaming white quartzite mixed with both these shales.
Next above lies more than four thousand feet of Siyeh limestone, very
solid, very massive, iron-gray with an insistent flavor of yellow, and
weathering buff. This heavy stratum is the most impressive part of the
Glacier landscape. Horizontally through its middle runs a dark broad
ribbon of diorite, a rock as hard as granite, which once, while molten,
burst from below and forced its way between horizontal beds of
limestone; and occasionally, as in the Swiftcurrent and Triple Divide
Passes, there are dull iron-black lavas in heavy twisted masses. Above
all of these colored strata once lay still another shale of very
brilliant red. Fragments of this, which geologists call the Kintla
formation, may be seen topping mountains here and there in the northern
part of the park.

Imagine these rich strata hung east and west across the landscape and
sagging deeply in the middle, so that a horizontal line would cut all
colors diagonally.

Now imagine a softness of line as well as color resulting probably from
the softness of the rock; there is none of the hard insistence, the
uncompromising definiteness of the granite landscape. And imagine
further an impression of antiquity, a feeling akin to that with which
one enters a mediaeval ruin or sees the pyramids of Egypt. Only here is
the look of immense, unmeasured, immeasurable age. More than at any
place except perhaps the rim of the Grand Canyon does one seem to stand
in the presence of the inf