FROM THULE TO HUMBOLDT'S GLACIER 



ocean. My notes speak artlessly of the long ever-gleaming 

 line of mountains, and of the dazzling plain of ice. The 

 mountain-line raised itself like a massive, glass-like wall, 300 

 feet above the sea, with unknown, unfathomable deeps at its 

 foot ; and its arched surface, sixty miles long from Cape 

 Agassiz to Cape Forbes, lost itself in unknown spaces, no more 

 than a single day's train journey from the North Pole. The 

 inland regions with which it was connected, and from which it 

 issued, was an unknown iner de glace, an ocean of ice of, so 

 far as one can see, limitless dimensions. 



" In my inmost mind I had expected to meet with such a 

 great glacier if ever I was happy enough to reach the north 

 coast of Greenland ; but now, when it lay before me, I could 

 hardly grasp it. Here it lay, plastic, movable, a half-solid 

 mass, crushing out life, swallowing cliffs and islands, and 

 forcing its way with an irresistible movement down through a 

 frozen sea." 



Reality proved a great disappointment to us. The glacier 

 certainly was mighty in extent, for it was about a hundred 

 kilometres broad ; but for one who is accustomed to travel 

 under the extravagant glaciers of Melville Bay, which in a 

 single sneeze throw gleaming iee-mountains out into the ocean, 

 Humboldt's Glacier seems to be merely a good-natured 

 attempt at a half-dead ice-stream — scarcely capable of repro- 

 duction. The edge of the glacier, which, almost without 

 crevasses, slopes evenly as a high road out into Peabody Bay, 

 is in most places of a height not exceeding fifty metres. In 

 several places it runs smoothly down into the water, so that it 

 is easily accessible from a boat. Our survey showed that the 

 water for the greater part in Kane Basin is very low ; and the 

 little ice-mountains, which approximately have the character 

 of pieces of Sikussaq, are aground. A measurement of their 

 height proved that Peabody Bay, as far out to sea as fifty-six 

 kilometres, was no deeper than forty metres. 



Advance Bay itself consists of a lot of small, low islets, and 

 the coast from Cape Agassiz is cut up by many shallow bights, 



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