THE GLACIERS OF GREENLAND. 13 



the ice, resplendent in the vigor of its own coloring, was a garden 

 of grass, moss, and wild flowers a veritable oasis in an ice wil- 

 derness. Fruitless would be the effort to depict the beauty of 

 this scene, so wholly magical and weird did it present itself to 

 the eye and mind. The long tufts of grass were twelve to six- 

 teen inches in height, and all about were a wealth and profusion 

 of flowers which would have done justice to the landscape of the 

 full tropics. 



Thus, in its quiet mood, does the Greenland glacier reveal 

 itself in a form wholly different from that which the imagination 

 paints it so different, in fact, that one is tempted to ask. Does it 

 conform to the conditions of existence which have made glaciers 



^ 



Detached Fkagments of Greenland Glaciek. The Watch-Tower Berg. 



elsewhere ? It unmistakably does, and these conditions have 

 shaped all the forms of glacier, from the tiniest to the largest, from 

 the quietest to the most wicked, to which the region has given 

 birth. Probably all the forms of glaciers that exist in the world 

 are represented i;i Greenland, and none are found there which 

 might be said to embody a type of structure that is unknown 

 elsewhere. Such as they are, they are but the remains of far 

 more extensive ice sheets which, at no very distant period back in 

 time, plowed far into the ocean deep, shaped much of the contours 

 of the existing land surface, and perhaps even carved a relief of 

 mountain and valley. The traces of past glaciation are every- 

 where apparent on the barren or uncovered shores, and troughs 

 or water channels, thousands of feet in depth, bight deep into the 



