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. 



N 



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 



