of nature. Developed by such a process, the thousands of bergs which throng these seas should keep the air and water in perpetual commotion—one fearful succession of explosive detonations and propagated waves. But it is only the lesser masses falling into deep waters which could justify the popular opinion. The enormous masses of the Great Glacier [of Greenland] are propelled step by step, and year by year, until, reaching water capable of supporting them, they are floated off, to be lost in the temperatures of other regions......
"The height of the ice-wall at the nearest point was about three hundred feet, measured from the water’s edge; and the unbroken right line of its diminishing perspective showed that this might be regarded as its constant measurement. It seemed, in fact, a great icy table-land, abutting with a clean precipice against the sea. This is, indeed, characteristic of all those arctic glaciers which issue from central reservoirs, or mers de glace, upon the fiords or bays, and is strikingly in contrast with the dependent or hanging glacier of the ravines."
Elsewhere the same writer speaks of this glacier as a line of cliff, rising in a solid glassy wall to a height of three hundred feet above the water-level, and with an 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 rail-road travel from the pole. The interior with which it
