CHAPTER XL 



IMPORTANT RESULTS OF THE RECENT JOURNEY. — THE GLACIER SYSTEM OP 

 GREENLAND. — GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THE SUBJECT. — ILLUSTRATIONS 

 DRAWN FROM THE ALPINE GLACIERS. — GLACIER MOVEMENT. — OUTLINE 

 OF THE GREENLAND MER BE GLACE. 



The results of the journey recorded in the last 

 chapter gave me great satisfaction. They furnished 

 an important addition to the observations which I had 

 made in former years ; and I was glad to have an 

 opportunity to form a more clear conception of the 

 glacier system of Greenland. The journey possesses 

 the greater value, that it was the first successful 

 attempt which had been made to penetrate into the 

 interior over the mer de glace. 



Although I had, in my overland journey from Van 

 Rensselaer Harbor with Mr. Wilson, in 1853, reached 

 the face of the mer de glace, where it rested behind the 

 lofty chain of hills which runs parallel with the axis 

 of the continent, yet this was the first time that I had 

 actually been upon it ; and its vastness did not on the 

 former occasion impress me as now. Even the de- 

 scription of the great Humboldt Glacier which I had 

 from Mr. Bonsall, and the knowledge that I had ac- 

 quired of the immense glacier discharges of the region 

 further south, failed to inspire me with a full compre- 

 hension of the immensity of ice which lies in the val- 

 leys and upon the sides of the Greenland mountains. 



Greenland may indeed be regarded as a vast reservoir 



