Dr Martens on the Glaciers of Spitsbergen. 169 



Phipps, in one of the views which ornament his work, has re- 

 presented one of the glaciers of Smeerenberg, and a cascade 

 issues from the lower third of its vertical height, and falls 

 into the sea. Scoresby and Latta saw the seven glaciers 

 traversed by small streams, some of which ran in the crevices, 

 and could only be discovered by the sound of the water. The 

 surface of the terminal glacier of Magdalena Bay was quite 

 dry, no water being found even in its fissures. 



Crevices. — In general these glaciers are covered with snow 

 all the year. Keilhau * has verified this affirmation regard- 

 ing those of the south, and the snow does not melt on those 

 of the north. At Bell Sound, however, the great glacier at 

 the time of our departure f had a great number of small pools 

 scattered over its surface. This layer of snow conceals the 

 crevices from the eye of the observer, and entirely covers them 

 up, if they are not very wide. At Magdalena Bay, I went 

 upon the great glacier at the bottom, in order to study them 

 more closely. Like those of the glaciers of the Alps, they 

 were all transverse, consequently parallel to the sea, and so 

 much the wider the nearer they approached to it. At the 

 surface of the glacier, they sometimes attained a width from 

 five to ten metres ; their depth was from fifteen to twenty. 

 Their two faces were always in contact at the bottom, which 

 was strewed with enormous fragments of ice and indurated 

 snow. Long stalactites hung from the walls of these crevices. 

 Sometimes they resembled the tubes of a huge organ, at other 

 times they were insulated, and reminded one of the pendant 

 ornaments of a Gothic cathedral. I could never see, in the 

 bottom of the fissure, the rock on which the glacier was rest- 

 ing. Saussure, in his ascent of Mont Blanc, was not more 

 successful. J It is, at the same time, probable that these rents 

 often traverse the glacier throughout its whole thickness in 

 Spitsbergen as well as in Switzerland.§ The adventure of 

 the Grindelwald innkeeper, who fell into a fissure and found 

 his way to the edge of the glacier, by following the course of 

 a rivulet, which had wrought out a passage for itself under 



* L. c. p. 135. t 4th August 1838. J L. c. § 1978, 



. See Hngi,l. <. p.338 and 331. 



