84 HUMBOLDT GLACIER. 



who, according to their own statement, reached 81° 20' n. lat., from 

 which point they supposed they had seen land as far as 82° 30' n. 

 lat. ; these two members of the expedition alone came to the Open 

 water. The breadth of the whole of the northernmost part of 

 Baffin Bay, thus explored, was from 8 to 16 geographical miles 

 between the coasts of Greenland and America. 1 



After the first excursions in the vicinity of their winter quarters 

 attention was directly drawn to the great Humboldt glacier, and 

 Kane had an occasion, one clear day in April, to survey it closely ; 

 and then remarks : — 



" My notes speak simply of the ' long ever-shining line of cliff, diminished 

 to a well-pointed wedge in the perspective ;' and again, of ' the face of glisten- 

 ing ice, sweeping in a long curve from the low interior, the facets in front 

 intensely illuminated by the sun.' But this line of cliff rose in a solid 

 glassy wall, 300 feet above the water-level, with an unknown, unfathomable 

 depth below it ; and its curved face, 60 miles in length from Cape Agassiz to 

 Cape Forbes, vanished into unknown space at not more than a single day's 

 railroad travel from the Pole. The interior with which it communicated, and 

 from which it issued, was an unsurveyed mer de glace, an ice-ocean, to the eye, 

 of boundless dimensions. 



" It was in full sight — the mighty crystal bridge which connects the two 

 continents of America and Greenland. I say continents ; for Greenland, 

 however insulated it may ultimately prove to be, is in mass strictly continental. 

 The least possible axis, measured from Cape Farewell to the line of this glacier, 

 in the neighbourhood of the 80th parallel, gives a length of more than 1200 

 miles, not materially less than that of Australia from its northern to its 

 southern Cape. 



" Imagine, now, the centre of such a continent, occupied through nearly its 

 whole extent by a deep unbroken sea of ice, that gathers perennial increase 

 from the waterparting of vast snow-covered mountains, and all the precipitations 

 of the atmosphere upon its own surface. Imagine this, moving onward like a 

 great glacial river, seeking outlets at every fjord and valley, rolling icy cata- 

 racts into the Atlantic and Greenland seas ; and, having at last reached the 

 northern limit of the land that has borne it up, pouring out a mighty frozen 

 torrent into unknown Arctic space. 



"It is thus, and only thus, that we must form a just conception of a 

 phenomenon like this great glacier. I had looked in my own mind for such 

 an appearance, should I ever be fortunate enough to reach the northern coast 

 of Greenland. But now that it was before me, I could hardly realize it. 



" I had recognized, in my quiet library at home, the beautiful analogies 

 which Forbes and Studer have developed between the glacier and the river. 

 But I could not comprehend at first this complete substitution of ice for 

 water. It was slowly that the conviction dawned on me, that I was looking 

 on the counterpart of the great river-system of Arctic Asia and America. 

 Yet, here were no water-feeders from the south. Every particle of moisture 



1 See vol. i. pp. 225-228. 



