All this brave warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face of the onlooking glaciers.
As far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are snow-buried in winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet, and those most exposed to avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet or more.

These last are, of course, nearly lost to the landscape.

Some remain buried for years, when the snowfall is exceptionally great, and many open only on one side late in the season.

The snow of the closed side is composed of coarse granules compacted and frozen into a firm, faintly stratified mass, like the _neve_ of a glacier.

The lapping waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous front like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea.