FROM THULE TO HUMBOLDT'S GLACIER 



That evening will never be forgotten. Soon the sun would 

 be shining night and day, but as yet it still disappeared below 

 the horizon for a few minutes, and created at its setting those 

 wonderful ranges of illumination on the sandstone mountains 

 and the white snow. These beautiful moments are over as soon 

 as the more uniform light of the midnight sun shines night and 

 day. The landscape was wonderful, not merely because the 

 coast with the broad ice-foot and the beautiful coast mountains 

 was in itself so charming, but also because the whole of Kane 

 Basin, with its irregular plain of pack-ice, gave a wild and 

 grand view to the north ; and every night the mountains of 

 Grinnell Land appeared in the fleeing sunlight as burning, 

 phantastic castles on the western horizon. 



GREAT BLOOD-BATH FJORD 



April 16th. — On the 16th of April we continued our journey 

 northward on a broad ice-foot which gave easy and rapid pro- 

 gress. The ice-foot is only formed in places where the water 

 ebbs and flows to a considerable height. When the water falls, 

 at ebb-tide, the cold is already so severe by the end of 

 September that the coast, up to the high-water mark, is covered 

 with a crust of ice, a thin layer being deposited at every ebb. 

 In the course of October and November the ice-foot has reached 

 its full thickness and forms a belt along the coast, a ribbon of 

 ice following all the branchings of the shore. The level of the 

 top of the ice-foot marks the highest tide of the year. Viewed 

 from the sea-ice it stands boldly like a wall. 



Where the coast consists of steep mountains the ice-foot 

 is quite narrow, because in these places it hangs on the sides of 

 the cliffs without support beneath ; but where the coast is flat 

 the bottom of the sea supports it, and in this case it is often 

 very broad. In no place is it broader than along the coast of 

 Kane Basin, where it measures from sixty to one hundred 

 metres. 



It was a joy to us all to shoot along this lovely road. We 



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