April 3, 1876.] "^^^ [Price, 



rise to a height to spread the mass outward by its own fluidity, or any 

 pressure of impending weight of ice. Tlie point of least resistance would 

 be the sodden ice and water beneath, The fresh ice contains no salt ; the 

 "water sodden," is " thoroughly infiltrated with saltwater." 1st Kane's 

 Grinnell Expedition, 96. Captain Richard Wells, commanding the whale 

 Ship Arctic, wrote to Mr. Grinnell, June 18, 1867, that he had steamed up 

 Smith's Sound to about 79° of latitude; found the ice "rotten and very much 

 decayed, the ship steaming easily through rotten floes. The ice on the east 

 side, excepting in Whale Sound, appeared to have decayed away and 

 parted from the land as far as the glass would carry, and would off'er no im- 

 pediment to the progress of any steam whaler. A poor foundation this, 

 upon which to build a moi;ntain of ice. 



And consider also the geography of the Arctic region as to the proportion 

 of sea and land, and the interposing elevations of the land . Remember, also, 

 that the earth's features at the supposed glacial period were in outline the 

 same as now. A polar ice-sheet to cover North America and Northern 

 Europe must have filled the ocean to the bottom and risen to a height far 

 above the sea to compel the ice to move by pressure southward to the 39th 

 or 40th degree. We need not estimate what that height must be, when we 

 know it would have no land basis to rest upon ; and know also that inter- 

 mediate mountains, indeed all land, would be obstructive of progress in- 

 stead of sources of power. In Europe, such a polar ice-sheet must have 

 filled the Arctic Sea, and risen from its bottom over the mountains of Nor- 

 way, Sweden and Scotland. In North America it must have risen over 

 the mountains of Grinnell Land, that of Greenland, and the Labi"ador and 

 Laurentian ranges, and crossed the St. Lawrence River. But glaciers 

 under pressure would sooner squeeze through a gorge, as two thousand j-ards 

 in width will pass through a defile of nine hundred yards in the Alps. 

 The channel of the Atlantic would be preferred to the elevated land to 

 travel southward across fifty degrees of latitude by land. The continental 

 ice-sheet would have been a glacier in the Atlantic. That the north polar 

 sea is open, is not only proved by men who have looked upon it, but Dr. 

 Scorsby testified that the "Right Whale" that always shuns the tropics, 

 has carried the marked harpoon from Baffin's Bay, through Behring's 

 Strait, into the Pacific ; and the whale must breathe the air He could not 

 cross the equator, nor go under ice into the Pacific, Maury's Ph. Geog. of 

 the Sea, Sec. 144. The birds go to the north of Greenland to breed because 

 there they find their food in an open sea ; and we know that northwest of 

 this continent the Arctic Ocean extends down to the seventieth degree of 

 latitude. 



Again : Concede the extreme glacialists solid land at the pole for the 

 ice-cap to rest upon ; yet consider the enormous demand made upon our 

 credulity to meet the conditions of their theory. The ice-sheet is to be 

 from ten to fifteen thousand feet thick in New Hampshire, according to 

 Agassiz : It is to reach the fortieth degree of north latitude according to 

 several other glacialists. To give it the pressure by gravitation of the glaciers 



