364 THE GERMAN ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



drift-wood we concluded tliat they were not there, as 

 they would have carefully collected it. 



On the 1st of November, at half-past six a.m., in the 

 darkness when we started for the back-ground of Tiroler 

 Fjord, it was still lovely weather (8.5° Fahr.) ; the end 

 of the Fjord, however, was not visible, and for a time 

 we thought that it was connected with Fligely Fjord, 

 when a much shorter route would be opened for our 

 return to the ship. By nine o'clock {6.8° Fahr.) we had 

 reached the mid-length of the Fjord, and stood upon its 

 west bank opposite a beautiful semicircle of glaciers, in 

 the centre of which rose a mighty granite colossus. The 

 lower end of these glaciers might be about 300 feet above 

 the level of the sea. 



A dead-white barrier, which from our standing-point 

 appeared to close in the Fjord a mile to the north of us, 

 and which in the early dawn of the morning we could 

 not understand, we now discovered to be the mighty wall 

 of the termination of a glacier. Natural as this dis- 

 covery was, we were taken by surprise, though even in 

 the distance we recognized these glaciers as of primary 

 formation. 



After an hour and a half's walking over the smooth 

 surface of the Fjord, we came upon an isolated 

 conical rock, surrounded by gigantic walls 300 feet high, 

 and upon the opposite bank was a similar isolated 

 screen. Behind the same, separated merely by a large 

 bed of rubbish, lay a colossal terminal moraine, and over 

 this rose the icy front of wildly-shaped glaciers. Scarcely 

 anywhere can the traces of glacier formation be so 

 strikingly followed out as on this spot. The surface of 

 this rock w^as perfectly polished, and cut with parallel 



