502 DR. KANE'S EXPEDITION. 



bears, the enfeebled state of the party, and the inade- 

 quacy of means and equipments, all, however, combined 

 to cause failure. By the 5th of May, Dr. Kane had 

 become delirious, and fainted every time that he was 

 taken -from the tent to the sledge ; so all idea of further 

 progress had to be given up. He was taken into the 

 brig on the 14th, and lay fluctuating between life and 

 death till the 20th. 



Some interesting discoveries were, however, made 01 

 this unfortunate trip, more especially of two remarkable 

 freaks of nature, one of which was called the " Three 

 Brother Turrets," the other, " Tennyson's Monument." 

 The latter was a solitary column, or " minaret tower " 

 of greenstone, the length of whose shaft was four hun- 

 dred and eighty feet, and it rose on a plinth, or pedestal, 

 itself two hundred and eighty feet high, as sharply fin- 

 ished as if it had been cast for the Place Yendome. But 

 by far the most remarkable feature in the inland Green- 

 land sea is the so-called " Great Glacier of Ilumboldt. 73 



" I will not attempt ? (writes Dr. Kane, speaking of 

 the impossibility of giving an idea of this great glacier 

 by sketches) "to do better by florid description. Men 

 only rhapsodize about Niagara and the ocean. My 

 notes speak simply of the ' long, ever-shining line of 

 cliff diminished to a well-pointed wedge in the perspec- 

 tive ; ' and again, of ' the face of glistening ice, sweep- 

 ing in a long curve from the low interior, the facets in 

 front intensely illuminated by the sun.' But this line 

 of cliff rose in solid glassy wall three hundred feet above 

 the water level, with an unknown, unfathomable depth 

 below it; and its. curved face, sixty miles in length, 

 from Cape Agassiz to Cape Forbes, vanished into 

 unknown space at not more than a single day's railroad- 

 travel from the pole. The interior with which it com- 

 municated, and from which it issued, was an unsurveyed 



