THE GREAT GLACIER. 
225 
Great Glacier of Humboldt. My recollections of this 
glacier are very distinct. The day was beautifully 
clear on which I first saw it; and I have a number of 
sketches made as we drove along in view of its mag¬ 
nificent face. They disappoint me, giving too much 
white surface and badly-fading distances, the gran¬ 
deur of the few bold and simple lines of nature being 
almost entirely lost. 
I will not attempt to do better by florid description. 
Men only rhapsodize about Niagara and the ocean. 
My notes speak simply of the “ long ever-shining line 
of clilf diminished to a well-pointed wedge in the per¬ 
spective;” and again, of “the face of glistening ice, 
sweeping in a long curve from the low interior, the 
facets in front intensely illuminated by the sun.” 
But this line of clilf rose in solid glassy wall three 
hundred feet above the water-level, with an unknown 
unfathomable depth below it; and its curved face, 
sixty miles in length from Cape Agassiz to Cape 
Forbes, vanished into unknown space at not more 
than a single day’s railroad-travel from the Pole. 
The interior with which it communicated, and from 
which it issued, was an unsurveyed mer de glace, an 
ice-ocean, to the eye of boundless dimensions. (43) 
It was in full sight—the mighty crystal bridge 
which connects the two continents of America and 
Greenland. I say continents; for Greenland, however 
insulated it may ultimately prove to be, is in mass 
strictly continental. Its least possible axis, measured 
from Cape Farewell to the line of this glacier, in the 
Vol. I.—15 
