304 Prof. Nordenshidid — Expedition to Greenland. 



near the edge, only a couple of hundred feet high, but then rising at 

 first rapidly, afterwards more slowly, to a height of several hundred 

 feet. In most places this wall could not possibly be scaled ; we 

 however soon succeeded in fi.nding a place where it was cut through 

 by a small cleft, sufficiently deep to afford a possibility of climbing 

 up with the means at our disposal, a sledge, which at need might be 

 used as a ladder, and a line originally 100 fathoms long, but which, 

 proving too heavy a burden, had before our arrival at the first resting- 

 place been reduced one-half. All of us, with the exception of our old 

 and lame boatman, assisted in the by no means easy work of bringing 

 over mountain, hill, and dale, the apparatus of the ice expedition 

 to this spot, and after our dinner's rest, a little further up the ice- 

 wall. Here our followers left us. Only Dr. Berggren, I, and two 

 Greenlanders (Isak and Sisarniak) were to proceed farther. We 

 immediately commenced our march, but did not get very far that day. 



The inland ice differs from ordinary glaciers by, among other 

 things, the almost total absence of moraine-formations. The col- 

 lections of earth, gravel, and stone, with which the ice on the land- 

 ward edge is covered, are in fact so inconsiderable in comparison 

 with the moraines of even very small glaciers, that they scarcely 

 deserve mention, and no larger, newly formed ridges of gravel 

 running parallel with the edge of the glacier are to be met with, at 

 least in the tract visited by us. 



The landward border of the inward ice is however darkened, we 

 can scarcely say covered with earth, and sprinkled with small sharp 

 stones. Here the ice is tolerably smooth, though furrowed by deep 

 clefts at right angles to the border — such as that made use of by us 

 to climb up. But in order not immediately to terrify the Green- 

 landers by choosing the way over the frightful and dangerous clefts, 

 we determined to abandon this comparatively smooth ground, and 

 at first take a southerly direction parallel with the chasms and after- 

 wards turn to the East. We gained our object by avoiding the 

 chasm, but fell in instead with extremely rough ice. We now under- 

 stood what the Greenlanders meant, when they endeavoured to dis- 

 suade us from the journey on the ice, by sometimes lifting their 

 hands up over their heads, sometimes sinking them down to the 

 ground, accompanied by to us an unintelligible talk. They meant 

 by this to describe the collection of closely heaped pyramids and 

 ridges of ice over which we had now to walk. The inequalities of 

 the ice were, it is true, seldom more than 40 feet high, with an in- 

 clination of 25 to 30 degrees. But one does not get on very fast, 

 when one has continually to drag a heavily-laden sledge up so irre- 

 gular an acclivity, and immediately after to endeavour to get down 

 uninjured, at the risk of getting one's legs broken, when occasionally 

 losing one's footing on the here often very slippery ice in attempting 

 to moderate the speed of the downward rushing sledge. Had we used 

 an ordinary sledge, it would immediately have been broken to pieces, 

 but as the component parts of our sledge were not nailed but tied 

 together, it held together at least for some hours. 



Already the next day we perceived the impossibility under such 



