92 
THE ICE-BELT. 
hours when we came to the end of our boating. In 
front and on one side was the pack, and on the other a 
wall some ten feet above our heads, the impracticable 
ice-belt. By waiting for high tide, and taking advan¬ 
tage of a chasm which a water-stream had worn in the 
ice, we managed to haul up our boat on its surface; 
but it was apparent that we must leave her there. She 
was stowed away snugly under the shelter of a large 
hummock; and we pushed forward in our sledge, laden 
with a few articles of absolute necessity. 
Here, for the first time, we were made aware of a re¬ 
markable feature of our travel. We were on a table or 
shelf of ice, which clung to the base of the rocks over¬ 
looking the sea, but itself overhung by steep and lofty 
clififs. Pure and beautiful as this icy highway was, 
huge angular blocks, some many tons in weight, were 
scattered over its surface; and long tongues of worn- 
down rock occasionally issued from the sides of the 
cliffs, and extended aci’oss our course. The cliffs 
measured one thousand and ten feet to the crest of the 
plateau above them.* 
We pushed forward on this ice-table shelf as rapidly 
as the obstacles Avould permit, though embarrassed a 
good deal by the frequent watercourses, which created 
* The cliffs were of tabular magnesian limestone, with interlaid and 
inferior sandstones. Their height, measured to the crest of the plateau, 
was nine hundred and fifty feet—a fair mean of the profile of the coast. 
The height of the talus of debris, where it united with the face of the 
cliff, was five hundred and ninety feet, and its angle of inclination 
between 38° and 45° 
