550 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
At the head of the fjord tlie terraces disappear along the steep, 
bare sides of the mountains. A moraine mound of loose ruhbisli 
and large blocks lies on the west side, and extends a little way into 
the fjord, pointing towards a similar ridge on the opposite side, as 
if both were parts of a curved terminal moraine. The view from 
this ridge is singularly imposing. The sombre precipitous mountains 
sweep upward from the edge of the water, seamed everywhere 
with streaks and sheets of snow. Down even to the beach these 
snow-drifts lie ; and it gives a vivid impression of the high lati- 
tude of the place, that even in July there should be deep masses 
of snow overhanging tangle covered rocks, and undermined by the 
wash of the waves. Over the crest of the mountains, at tlie head of 
the fjord, we see the edge of the great snow-field of the Jokuls Fjeld, 
and stealing down from underneath, the snow comes a broken, shat- 
tered mass of glacier ice, broadest at the top, and narrowing down- 
wards till its point disappears in a deep clilf or ravine, perhaps a 
third of the way down from the surface of the snow-field to the sea. 
The eastern part of this glacier seems plastered as it were over the 
forehead of the mountain, and is ever sending off fragments down 
the dark precipice below. Indeed, the whole glacier is in constant 
commotion, cracking, and crashing, and discharging masses of ice 
and snow, which pour over the black rocks in sheets of white dust, 
with a noise like the unintermitted thunder of a battle. These 
ice-falls are in large measure intercepted at the point where 
the glacier disappears behind the side of the ravine. They 
seemed, indeed, to collect in the ravine, and to slide down through 
it; for at its lower end a second glacier begins, and expands 
with the expansion of the hollow in which it lies, till it reaches 
the edge of the fjord, where it may be a quarter of a mile 
broad. This lower glacier appeared to me not connected with the 
snow-field, but a true glacier remanie, deriving its materials en- 
tirely from the avalanches of snow and ice that pour down upon its 
surface from the precipices overhead. It has a white, or dull green- 
ish white colour, varied with well-marked dirt-bands. The slope 
of its surface was judged to be fully 20° or 25°. A few longitudi- 
nal crevasses make their appearance along the middle of the glacier, 
and a little further down, the transverse crevasses increase in num- 
ber and size, until at its foot the glacier, broken by large semicircu- 
