130 
GLACIERS. 
rub with soda; wash out the soap thus freely made; 
parboil and pickle. The bird is, after all, not so de- 
testable, early in the season. At the Hudson Bay’s 
settlements they preserve him in salt. Sea-gull is 
worthy of all honorable mention. The filet of a large 
Ivory one is a morceau between a spring chicken and 
our own unsurpassed canvas back. As to these little 
Guillemots or Auks [Uria alle, or alke), quocunque no- 
mine gauclent.^ like all birds feeding on cmstaceal life, 
they are very red in meat, juicy, fat, delicate, and fla- 
vorsome, something between a blue- wing and a Dela- 
ware rail ; in a word, the perfection of good eating. 
“We ran along the coast to-day with gentle airs, 
and near enough to keep me busy with my pencil. 
Glacier after glacier met us, and the background of 
rounding snow-covered mountains contrasted finely 
with the square blocking of the rugged precipices at 
the water-line. These glaciers, however, were de- 
tached, not running in continuous curves along the 
coast, but abutting from opening valleys. The struc- 
ture of the shore was evidently metamorphio. It re- 
minded me of some portions of our Alleghany ridge, 
and I even thought that I could distinguish in the ar- 
rangement of these valley indentations our own famil- 
iar form of anticlinal rupture. 
“Although icebergs still crowd the horizon, and 
some two hundred of them can be counted within the 
eye circle, we are evidently fast getting rid of the ice. 
It is true that the shore pack still stretches out close 
upon our left — a barrier apparently as permanent as 
the glaciered hills with which it is united ; but to sea- 
ward, open water-leads gladden us in every dii’ection. 
We forced to-day through but one floe tongue, using 
the hawser and windlass about an hour. With this ex- 
