8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was missing. Mr. VerLoeff, mineralogist of tlie North Green- 

 land party, had made a final excursion after new rock specimens, 

 and from this search he never returned to meet his associates. 

 It was to ascertain his fate that we were again summoned to 

 those icy fields and domes whose first acquaintance we had but 





Ceossi^'u a Greenland Glacier. 



recently made. We suspected that our poor friend had attemi)ted 

 a traverse of one of the many glacial sheets which tumbled out 

 into the sea and that disaster had overtaken him in his lonely 

 tour. Accordingly, we instituted a close search over mountain top 

 and valley, and day and night peered among the ice pinnacles 

 for possible traces of the missing man. Our first search was made 

 on the great glacier, since named the Sun Glacier, which cuts the 

 eastern extremity of McCormick Bay, and parts the dry land which 

 in the summer season bounds both the northern and southern 

 shores. It was early in the evening of the 19th of August, when 

 the elevation of the sun still marked about twenty degrees above 

 the horizon, that we again entered the shadows of the same 

 granite cliffs over which, only a few days before, we had so joy- 

 fully passed after our meeting with Mr. Peary on his return 

 from liis memorable journey. The scene had changed. The 

 deep canon, along which the eye could follow the long, lazy line of 

 glacier for a distance of twelve to fifteen miles to its mother ice 

 cap, looked bleak and forbidding ; there was no longer that charm 

 of the unknown about it which attracts when all Nature smiles 

 with success. A dark cloud had settled over the landscape and 

 for a time closed out its joys. 



