Its western exposure, however, is of a fairly gentle slope, so that the snow was blown over to the eastern side, where there are several precipitous _cirques_ of stupendous size for the preservation of the accumulated and accumulating snow.
Now let us, in imagination, ascend in a balloon over this region and hover there, seeking to reconstruct, by mental images, the appearance it must have assumed and the action that took place in the ages long ago.
Snow, thirty, fifty, one hundred or more feet deep lay, on the level, and on the mountain slopes or in precipitous _cirques_ twice, thrice, or ten times those depths.

Snow thus packed together soon changes its character.

From the light airy flake, it becomes, in masses, what the geologists term _neve_.

This is a granular snow, intermediate between snow and ice.

A little lower down this _neve_ is converted into true glacial ice-beds, which grow longer, broader, deeper and thicker as the _neve_ presses down from above.
Lay minds conceive of these great ice-beds of transformed snow as inert, immovable bodies.