No. XVI. REPORT ON PETERMANN GLACIER. 349 



Carrying the eye alongthe north-easl Line of cliffs, we Baw the 

 land terminate abruptly aboul twenty miles off in a prominenl 

 bluff, and from this point to a quarter of the way across the 

 head of the fiord no land was to be Been, bul the same extra- 

 ordinary undulating sea of ice which, from the main ridges 

 lying in a north and south direction, would seem to be flowing 

 into the fiord in an east to west direction. The fact of our 

 distinctly seeing those ridges at so great a distance was 

 perhaps due to the gradual shoaling of the water up the 

 fiord, and the consequent rise in the elevation of the ice. 



To the south-east a background of land about thirty miles 

 distant was clearly seen extending behind, and as it were 

 overlapping the apparent termination of the south-west line 

 of cliffs. The latter cliffs presented to the eye an appearance 

 almost precisely similar to that of the north-east cliffs, and 

 they seemed to correspond as if originally parts of the same 

 land. Both were of about equal height, were equally pre- 

 cipitous, presented the same arrangement of strata, the same 

 description of ice-cap ; and both were grooved by glaciers, 

 there being four on the south-west side and three on the 

 north-east side of the fiord. 



When about a mile from the nearest glacier we came to 

 a wide fissure, about thirty yards broad, which seemed to 

 extend nearly across the fiord, and whose precipitous glassy 

 walls, fifty feet high from brink to water, we had no means 

 of descending. The bottom of this fissure was composed of 

 treacherous-looking, slushy ice, with a lane of dark water 

 two feet wide along the middle ; so that had we succeeded 

 in getting down we should probably have been unable to 

 cross. About this same locality were several narrow fissures, 

 some of which, from the very slippery nature of the ice, it 

 was difficult to avoid falling into. One of these, in a tolerably 

 level part of the ice, we found by measurement to be two 

 feet wide above, and twenty-three feet deep, from brink to a 

 probable false bottom of loose snow, on which the light weight 

 of our measuring line rested. 



The ice seemed to be incessantly cracking. Wherever we 



