KANE. MODEL OF PEARY 197 



Vendome. But by far the most remarkable feature in the inland Greenland 

 sea is the so-called "Great Glacier of Humboldt." Of this glacier Dr. Kane 

 gives a description which constitutes one of the pieces of word-painting that 

 fired Peary's imagination. "This line of cliff rose in solid glassy wall three 

 hundred feet above the water level, with an unknown, unfathomable depth 

 below it; and its curved face, sixty miles in length, from Cape Agassiz to 

 Cape Forbes, vanished into unknown space at not more than a single day's 

 railroad-travel from the pole. The interior with which it communicated, 

 and from which it issued, was an unsurveyed iner de glace, an ice-ocean, to the 

 eye of boundless dimensions. 



"It was in full sight — the mighty crystal bridge which connects the two 

 continents of America and Greenland. I say continents, for Greenland, how- 

 ever insulated it may ultimately prove to be, is in mass strictly continental. 

 Its least possible axis, measured from Cape Farewell to the line of this glacier, 

 in the neighborhood of the eightieth parallel, gives a length of more than 

 twelve hundred miles, — not materially less than that of Australia from its 

 northern to its southern cape. 



"Imagine now the center of such a continent, occupied through nearly its 

 whole extent by a deep unbroken sea of ice, that gathers perennial increase 

 from the water-shed of vast snow-covered mountains, and al' the precipita- 

 tions of the atmosphere upon its own surface. Imagine this moving onward 

 like a great glacial river, seeking outlets at every fiord and valley, rolling 

 icy cataracts into the Atlantic and Greenland seas ; and, having at last reached 

 the northern limit of the land that has borne it up, pouring out a mighty 

 frozen torrent into unknown Arctic space." 



In the summer of 1854 Dr. Kane began his return to civilization. It was 

 a journey full of peril, but never of despair, though by the end of the trip 

 the men were starving, human wrecks. As they crossed Melville Bay death 

 stared them in the face. They were going largely on foot, and making a 

 mile a day. 



Dr. Kane's description of his rescue is typical of the thrilling descriptive 

 passages in his book. He and his men were on the coast, awaiting they knew 

 not what. 



"Just then," says the book, "a familiar sound came to us over the water. 

 We had often listened to the screeching of the gulls, or the bark of the fox, 

 and mistaken it for the 'Huk' of the Esquimaux; but this had about it an 

 inflection not to be mistaken, for it died away in the familiar cadence 

 of a 'haloo.' 



