2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the expanse. For full two hours we steamed abreast of the great 

 Frederickshaab glacier (latitude 62) and along the northeast 

 contours of Melville Bay the eye failed to detect a break in the 

 continuity of the ice wall for seemingly thirty miles or more. 

 Where the eye follows a line of coast for any distance it is almost 



Melville Glacier. 



sure to compass all the types of glaciers which belong to the 

 land : the broad and lazy glacial plain, flattened out like a vast 

 and continuous ice slide ; the sharply pitched hanging glaciers, 

 which, caterpillar-like, crawl down the steeper slopes at angles 

 of twenty-five to thirtj^-five degrees; and the deeply fissured 

 crevasse glaciers, whose forbidding aspect only too vividly recalls 

 the wicked ice sheets of the Alps. These types are, however, but 

 the expression of a common structure, modified by local condi- 

 tions, and set into the particular mold which belongs to each 

 particular region. To assume, as perhaps the greater number of 

 geologists do, that the Greenland glaciers represent, both in their 

 construction and workings, a distinct or individual type, is to do 

 violence to truth. 



In the many hours of silent contemplation of these vast ice 

 sheets I often pondered the question of the possible thickness of 

 the ice which was involved in their making. Agassiz's measure- 



