WRECKED ON THE COAST OF GREENLAND 



in the glacier, with the ice higher all around it. It was 

 just such a depression as is made where a current of water 

 is obstructed by some obstacle; the current pushes a con- 

 siderable distance up the obstruction, and then breaks 

 over the sides to go around it; but ice, being much less 

 fluid than water, moves off 

 in larger swells and more 

 gradual curves. 



But even an Arctic after- 

 noon has its close. With 

 regret we sought our boats 

 and set out on the return, to 

 go again through the mag- 

 nificent panorama of the 

 morning. The day had been 

 one never to be forgotten. 

 With the pure air making 

 everything clear within the 

 range of vision; with the 

 consciousness that we were 

 treading where other human 

 feet had probably never trod, 

 and were looking on scenes 

 that few, if any, others would 

 ever see; amid a solitude 

 that was unbroken by living objects except here and 

 there a passing bird or a wary fox, whose tracks sur- 

 prised us on the newly fallen snow; with gurgling streams 

 of purest water from the melting ice all about us, hasten- 

 ing in channels of deepest blue to plunge at last with 

 deafening roar into some mvsterious moulin — the senses 

 were overburdened with material for the imagination to 

 seize upon and work up into pictures of scientific form 

 and poetic fancy. We tried in vain to answer the ques- 

 tion which involuntarily arose, Why is there so much 

 waste of beauty and grandeur beyond the reach of ordinary 

 mortals? 



One of the most interesting results of our various ex- 

 cursions was the evidence collected showing that even the 

 Greenland glaciers are smaller than thev once were. 

 Greenland, too, has had its glacial period, when the whole 



H Aw ma mm. . 



A FAMILY GROUP 



215 



