THE GLACIERS OF GREENLAND. 



5 



the ice, and tlie general compression or extension that it has 

 undergone. In but few instances did we find the rifting so com- 

 plete as to debar easy circumvention through zigzagging, and 

 rarely did the crevasses have a greater vertical plunge than from 

 thirty to forty feet, or a width exceeding ten or fifteen feet ; in- 

 deed, by far the greater number were of insignificant depth and 

 breadth, offering little difficulty in their passage to the moun- 

 taineer provided with a glacial axe. 



Our first attempt to scale a Greenland glacier was made on 

 one of the minor ice sheets debouching on the northern face of 

 Sonntag Bay, in latitude 78. We had with us a steel-shod Hud- 

 son Bay toboggan, on which we loaded some two hundred or two 

 hundred and fifty pounds of traveling impedimenta, and which 



Terminal Wall of Verhoeff Glacier. 



we had hoped to be able to drag with us. We had selected this 

 glacier because from our anchorage it presented to the eye an 

 attractively gentle slope, which was apparently interrupted by 

 but few crevasses, and a terminal ice wall of but insignificant 

 height. Approach to the ice border soon showed, however, how 

 erroneous had been our perspective. The ice wall, instead of 

 being fifteen to twenty feet in height, as we had assumed, in 

 reality rose to the respectable proportions of some sixty feet, over 

 which arched a dome of graceful and even curve. In a few 

 minutes some of our party had cut their way to the top, but it 

 was made manifest that any attempt to draw our sledge over 

 would only result in disaster to it, and we accordingly abandoned 

 the enterprise. We repeated our efPorts still the same night on a 



