THE GREENLAND EXPEDITION OF 1895. 885 
but slightly higher than their sides, that is, that they were but 
slightly arched in the cross-section; that their vertical fronts 
were very slight; and that their lateral margins rarely presented 
vertical sections. 
One or two peculiar phenomena of this region merit special 
mention. In two of the minor indentations on the coast of 
Melville Bay, the ends of glaciers were seen to be floating. 
These little bays had not freed themselves from the ice of the 
preceding winter,— probably not from the ice of many preced- 
ing winters. The topographic relations are such as to indicate 
that the water deepens from the head of the bay outward, and 
from the lateral margins inward, very gradually. In their 
advancé, the glaciers entering these bays at their heads encoun- 
ter the bay ice, crowd it, break it more or less, and heap it up in 
front of themselves. But in the cases referred to, they had not 
forced it out, and it still constituted a barrier to their advance. 
The result was that the ends of the glacier were not broken off, 
or at least not floated away in the form of bergs, as would have 
been the case in open water. Since the water was shallower 
near the margins of the bay and deeper in the middle, the lateral 
margins of the protruding glacier continued to rest on the bot- 
tom, while its central portion got beyond its depth and was 
floated. The deepening of the water from the margins of the 
bay toward the center appeared to be so gradual, that in neither 
of the two cases seen did the floating center of the glacier 
appear to be greatly fractured where it joined the marginal por- 
tion which was still resting on the bottom. Similarly the deep- 
ening of the waters from the head of the bay out was so gradual 
that the floating portion of the end was not separated by any 
- notable fault from the ice above which still rested on the 
bottom. That the central portion was actually floating, however, 
was shown by the approximate flatness of its surface, by the 
fact that it was somewhat lower than the marginal parts, in one 
case as much as thirty feet lower, and by the occasional gaping 
fissures which exposed the salt water beneath. In both cases 
the lateral margins of these glaciers, the central portions of 
