summer cruise 43 
coast in order to sight Conical island, and so reach the fine 
harbour of Parker Snow bay just inside the island; this was 
successfully accomplished, and the ship was brought to anchor 
near the head of the bay. The wind freshened during the night, 
and in the morning blew so strongly that it was impossible to 
reach the shore with the ship's boat. At noon the wind regis- 
tered forty-eight miles an hour, and some of the gusts were 
much stronger. 
The wind fell towards evening, allowing us to land. We 
were now well north of the Arctic circle, and a bright sun re- 
mained visible all night. 
An ascent of one of the glaciers at the head of the bay 
afforded valuable information concerning the ice-cap and glacial 
phenomena, discussed later in the report. A sharp rocky hill, 
960 feet high, divides the glaciers; this was crossed and the 
descent made by the second glacier, where much trouble was 
experienced crossing the deep gullies cut into it by surface 
streams of water. Neither of these glaciers discharges into the 
sea, their fronts terminating against high steep banks of boulder 
clay brought from above by the moving ice. A light pink 
gneiss, cut by many veins of quartz apparently all quite barren, 
is the chief rock of these hills. The hills surrounding Parker 
Snow bay rise in abrupt cliffs nearly 1,500 feet above the 
water; the country then rises less abruptly another thousand 
feet to the lower level of the great ice-cap which covers the 
entire interior of Greenland. 
SMITH SOUND. 
On our return to the ship the anchor was raised and we left 
the bay, passing the great Petiwik glacier at midnight, with 
the sun shining over the top of its five-mile front of ice, which 
ends in abrupt low cliffs of ice rising directly from the sea. 
Large icebergs are frequently broken from this long face, and 
