THE WHITE WORLD 



I could lie on my stomach and with difficulty manage this 

 job, nearly suffocating for want of air and melting with 

 perspiration. 



Then crawling with my partners into the sleeping-bag, 

 I found the icewater melting from a glacier above, the 

 result of a previous rain, filtering 

 into our tent, and before morning 

 we were soaking wet. I got out 

 about S o'clock and walked twenty 

 steps to the waters edge. There, 

 under the direction of a fat Eskimo 

 girl, with only a seal-skin line and 

 a hook without bait, I pulled out 

 half a dozen large rock-cod, rang- 

 ing from two to four pounds each. 

 Half an hour after catching the 

 fish, we had them fried and eaten. 

 A four-mile row brought us to 

 the foot and side of the glacier, 

 though not without considerable 

 trouble, for the Eskimo are super- 

 stitious and are afraid to go near 

 glaciers ; they never think of going 

 upon them alone. It is in a certain 

 sense dangerous, for large bergs 

 breaking off make no little com- 

 motion and may easily upset a boat. 

 The roaring of cracking, breaking, 

 sea birds pushing masses of ice, millions of 



tons, sounds like that of thunder and 

 of battle. Our enthusiastic professors with nothing but alpen 

 stocks and note-books, started at once to climb upward on the 

 smoothest side and I, after making several exposures of the 

 front view, followed in their tracks. I saw no geological 

 problems, but a beauty of form and color which almost 

 paid me for all the trouble of coming to Greenland. The 

 blue sky, the white snow, the dark waters, and the colors 

 of ice, ranging from lightest blue-green to darkest shades, 

 all was exquisite. 



Fissures and crevasses made ascent difficult, and soon I 

 was hot and uncomfortable, slippery, deceiving ice, holes 



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