IV.] INLAND-ICE TRAVELLING. 135 



As on Spitzbergen the ice-field here is doubtless interrupted 

 by deep bottomless clefts, over which the snowstorms of winter 

 throw fragile snow-bridges, which conceal the openings of the 

 abysses so completely that one may stand close to their edge 

 without having any suspicion that a step further is certain 

 death to the man, who, without observing the usual precaution 

 of being bound by a rope to his companions, seeks his way 

 over the blinding-white, almost velvet-like, surface of this 

 snow-field, hard packed indeed, but bound together by no 

 firm crust. If a man, after taking necessary precautions against 

 the danger of tumbling down into these crevasses, betakes 

 himself farther into the country in the hope that the apparently 

 even surface of the snow will allow of long day's marches, he is 

 soon disappointed in his expectations ; for he comes to regions 

 where the ice is everywhere crossed by narrow depressions, 

 canals, bounded by dangerous clefts, with perpendicular walls 

 up to fifteen metres in height. One can cross these deytressions 



SECTION OF INLAND-rCE. 



A. Open glacier-caual. b. Snow-filled canal, c. Canal concealed by a snow-vault. 

 D. Glacier-clefts. 



only after endless zigzag wanderings, at places where they have 

 become filled with snow and thereby passable. In summer 

 again, when the snow has melted, the surface of the ice- 

 wilderness has quite a different appearance. The snow has 

 disappeared and the ground is now formed of a blue ice, which 

 however is not clean, but everywhere rendered dirty by 

 a grey argillaceous dust, carried to the surface of the 

 glacier by wind and rain, probably from distant mountain 

 heights. Among this clay, and even directly on the ice itself, 

 there is a scanty covering of low vegetable organisms. The 

 ice-deserts of the Polar lands are thus the habitat of a peculiar 

 flora, which, insignificant as it appears to be, forms however 

 an important condition for the issue of the conflict which goes 

 on here, year after year, century after century, between the sun 

 and the ice. For the dark clay and the dark parts of plants 

 absorb the warm rays of the sun better than the ice, and 

 therefore powerfully promote its melting. They eat themselves 



