CROSSING M INTURN RIYER. 
93 
large gorges in our path, winding occasionally, and 
generally steep-sided. We had to pass our sledge care¬ 
fully down such interruptions, and bear it upon our 
shoulders, wading, of course, through water of an ex¬ 
tremely low temperature. Our night halts were upon 
knolls of snow under the rocks. At one of these, the 
tide overflowed our tent, and forced us to save our 
bufialo sleeping-gear by holding it up until the water 
subsided. This exercise, as it turned out, was more of 
a trial to our patience than to our health. The circu¬ 
lation was assisted perhaps by a perception of the ludi¬ 
crous. Eight Yankee Caryatides, up to their knees in 
water, and an entablature sustaining such of their 
household gods as could not bear immersion ! (21) 
On the 1st of September, still following the ice-belt, 
we found that we were entering the recesses of another 
bay but little smaller than that in which we had left 
our brig. The limestone walls ceased to overhang us; 
we reached a low fiord, and a glacier blocked our way 
across it. A succession of terraces, rising with sym¬ 
metrical regularity, lost themselves in long parallel 
lines in the distance. They were of limestone shingle, 
and wet with the percolation of the melted ice of the 
glacier. Where the last of these terraced faces abutted 
upon the sea, it blended with the ice-foot, so as to 
make a frozen compound of rock and ice. Here, lying 
in a pasty silt, I found the skeleton of a musk ox. The 
head was united to the atlas; but the bones of the 
spine were separated about two inches apart, and con¬ 
veyed the idea of a displacement produced father by 
