THE GLACIERS OF GREENLAND. 



1 1 



fort. Fortunately, the storm was of only short duration, and in 

 its wake the landscape rose resplendent in its new garb. 



We had now penetrated up stream about five or six miles, and 

 had ascended probably six hundred or seven hundred feet in that 

 distance. At three o'clock in the morning we started upon our 

 return. We had seen nothing, and no sound, save the echoes 

 from the beetling clifi's of granite and trap, which here rose in 

 impending masses two thousand five hundred or three thousand 

 feet above us, responded to the oft-repeated shouts to which we 

 gave utterance. 



The general aspect and features of the Sun Glacier we found 

 repeated in a still more gigantic ice sheet, the Verhoeflf Glacier, 

 which bore the final traces of our unfortunate associate and 

 buried in its bosom the forlorn hope which carried our search for 

 upward of seven days and nights over mountain, snow, and ice. 

 This glacier measures two miles across its terminal wall, but in 

 its middle course, where it is split by a giant nunatah rising hun- 

 dreds of feet above the glistening sheet of ice, it expands to fully 

 twice this width, and then recalls the broad mers de glace with 

 which, as miniatures, we had become acquainted in the ice fields 

 of Switzerland and Scandinavia. But here we have the flat 

 united ice mass, with only a suggestion of crevasse to remind one 

 that the ice is a moving body, tearing itself ajjart and then unit- 

 ing ; all appears firm and stationary, except small rills, which in 

 serpentine courses cut shallow troughs into the surface and musi- 

 cally wend their way to lower levels, ultimately to join the sea. 

 To the eye the main part of the glacier appeared almost absolute- 

 ly horizontal, and probably it was the flattest of all the sheets that 

 we examined. We were unable to determine the rate of motion, 

 but doubtless it was exceedingly slow, perhaps averaging not 

 more than twelve to fifteen inches in twenty-four hours. In the 

 Sun Glacier we had determined a movement of some seven or 

 eight inches in as many hours, but this was in a part of the glacier 

 where the ice was badly cut by crevasses and in its more rapid- 

 ly moving lower section. In some of the minor glaciers of the 

 same region we could determine no motion at all, and possibly at 

 that time they had come to an almost absolute standstill. While 

 no detailed observations on the motion of the glaciers of north- 

 ern Greenland have as yet been made, and therefore no safe de- 

 ductions can be drawn from the fragmentary records that are 

 now before us, it would appear, nevertheless, almost certain that 

 the majority of the northern ice sheets are much slower in their 

 motion than those of South and Central Greenland a condition, 

 indeed, that might have been inferred from the conditions of cli- 

 mate which govern the several regions. 



The Verhoeft" Glacier presented one aspect in its existence 



