14 VOYAGE TO THE POLAR SEA. July 



filled ravine, but at an altitude of some 600 or 800 feet 

 there was much unmelted snow still left on the hill 

 sides. In the upper lands the glacier-filled valleys 

 bridged the whole into a fairly level white surface, 

 above which the higher mountain tops occasionally 

 broke through the clouds, at so great an altitude as 

 to render their outline scarcely distinguishable. 



Only a few stray icebergs were sighted until we 

 had passed Knight Island in latitude 67° N. ; but 

 on approaching Disco Bay, the most southern large 

 birthplace of icebergs on the west Greenland shore, a 

 great number were met with ; the northerly running 

 current evidently wedges them away from the Green- 

 land coast south of Holsteinborg. 



