92 THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



the largest glacier known, being about sixty miles across, and 

 through at least one half of that extent discharging icebergs. 

 Like the glacier already spoken of as having broken through 

 the mountains near Port Poulke, this Humboldt Glacier has 

 overcome the mountain-barriers, and poured down into the 

 sea between Greenland and Washington Land, which latter is 

 probably an island, lying in the expansion of Smith Sound 

 (or Strait, as named by Dr. Kane), the water flowing to the 

 eastward of Washington Land being now entirely replaced by 

 the glacier. From Humboldt Glacier the face of the mer de 

 glace sweeps around behind the mountain-chain in a curve 

 toward Port Foulke. At the point reached by Mr. Wilson 

 and myself, the ice was breaking through the mountains, 

 nearly midway between these two extremes of the curve, and 

 will, at some remote period, find its way into Smith Sound 

 through the tortuous valley which now forms the bed of Mary 

 Minturn Kiver. South of Port Foulke the face of the mer de 

 glace forms a series of similar curves of greater or less extent, 

 and through all the great valleys of the Greenland coast-range, 

 glaciers discharge into Baffin Bay their streams of icebergs. 

 Several of these glaciers are from five to twenty miles across, 

 and those of Melville Bay are doubtless much more exten- 

 sive.* 



This great Humboldt Glacier enters Peabody Bay from 

 the east, filling the whole space from latitude 79° to 80°. 

 There is, however, a vast movement of glacier-ice toward 

 this point from the southeast. The face of the Humboldt 

 Glacier is described by Dr. Kane as everywhere, for a 

 distance of more than sixty miles, an "abrupt and threat- 

 ening precipice, only broken by clefts and deep ravines, 

 giving breadth and interest to its wild expression." f The 

 party which first saw this majestic ice-front were com- 

 pelled to traverse its entire breadth on the ice which had 

 formed outside it in the months of September and October. 

 A chief peril of their situation arose from the discharging 



* " An Arctic Boat- Journey," pp. 10-12, 377, 378. 

 f "Arctic Explorations," vol. i, p. 222. 



