168 BOULDERS: 



Bay, and beyond the most northerly point, in that 

 direction, that had at that time been reached by any 

 previous traveller, Dr. Kane made many interest- 

 ing observations and discoveries. He seems to have 

 penetrated deep into the heart of Nature's northern 

 secrets. Among other things, he ascertained the 

 manner in which boulders are transported from 

 their northern home. 



The slow, creeping movement of glaciers, to which 

 we have already referred, is one means whereby 

 large boulders are formed. At the lower edge of 

 one of the glaciers of Norway we saw boulders, 

 thirty or forty feet in diameter, which had been 

 rolled and forced, probably for ages, down the valley 

 by the glacier, and thrust out on the sea-beach, where 

 they lay with their angles and corners rubbed off, 

 and their surfaces rounded and smoothed as com- 

 pletely as those of the pebbles by which they were 

 surrounded. 



Had these boulders been formed in the arctic 

 regions, they might have been thrust out upon the 

 thick solid crust of the frozen sea, which in time 

 would have been broken off and floated away; thus 

 rafting the boulders to other shores. The formation 

 of boulders, and their positions, are facts that we have 

 seen. Their being carried out to sea by ice-rafts is 

 a fact that Dr. Kane has seen and recorded. On 

 the wild rocky shores where his ship was set fast, 

 there was a belt of ice lining the margin of the sea, 

 which he termed the " ice-belt," or the " ice-foot." 



