146 
THE GREAT GLACIER. 
Anxious as I was to press our return to the brig, 
I was well paid for my disappointment. I had not 
realized fully the spectacle of this stupendous monu¬ 
ment of frost. I had seen it for some hours hanging 
over the ice like a white-mist cloud, hut now it rose 
up before me clearly defined and almost precipitous. 
The whole horizon, so vague and shadowy before, was 
broken by long lines of icebergs; and as the dogs, 
cheered by the cries of their wild drivers, went on, 
losing themselves deeper and deeper in the labyrinth, 
it seemed like closing around us the walls of an 
icy world. They stopped at last; and I had time, 
while my companions rested and fed, to climb one of 
the highest bergs. The atmosphere favored me: the 
blue tops of Washington Land were in full view; and, 
losing itself in a dark water-cloud, the noble headland 
of John BarroAV. 
The trend of this glacier is a few degrees to the Avest 
of north. We folloAved its face afterward, edging in 
for the Greenland coast, about the rocky archipelago 
Avhich I have named after the Advance. From one of 
these rugged islets, the nearest to the glacier which 
could be approached Avith any thing like safety, I 
could see another island larger and closer in shore, 
already half covered by the encroaching face of the 
glacier, and great masses of ice still detaching them¬ 
selves and splintering as they fell upon that portion 
which protruded. Repose Avas not the characteristic 
of this seemingly solid mass; every feature indicated 
activity, energy, movement. 
