<"^ " GLACIERS AND FJORDS. 561 



stillness of death ; scarcely a sign of life interrupted the 

 rough grandeur of the mountain land. Instead of the 

 luxuriant plains of our own Alpine valleys, with their 

 farms and villages, lay the dark water-surface of the 

 Fjord 6850 feet beneath us. Countless ice-bergs floated 

 on its surface, looking in the distance like glistening 

 pearls, and the frightful rocky walls seemed to descend 

 perpendicularly into it. From every mountain steep of 

 yonder valley descended gigantic glaciers, and from the 

 high barrier of ice at its lower end the stately icebergs 

 were loosened, and carried onward to the ocean by ebb- 

 tide and current. 



" One thing attracted our attention more than any- 

 thing else, and that was a monstrous pyi'amid of ice to the 

 west, rising about 4850 feet above a high mountain ridgo. 

 This glorious peak could bear none other name than that 

 of Petermann, the honoured originator of the first 

 German Arctic Expedition : its real height must have 

 approached 11,000 feet. 



" Along the horizon stretched an Alpine world, with 

 countless summits, exceeding 9700 feet. The Kaiser 

 Franz-Joseph's Fjord could be traced for about forty miles 

 towards W.S.S. 



"For two hours I had been sketching and working 

 with the theodolite on the top of a rocky projection, and 

 in order that I might not slip, had taken off my shoes 

 and stood in my stockings, although they were wet 

 through from the long walk in the snow, and quite frozen. 

 This caused me to suffer more from the cold tban I had 

 done during our worst sleighing journeys, when the cold, 

 at 27° Fahr.,^ had been unnoticed. The temperature, 



^ And yet on the southern side of a block of rock we found melted 

 ice-water. 



O 



