Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/16

6 larger but more auspicious-looking glacier, and without difficulty, by climbing over the scanty lateral moraine, reached the middle of the ice. The surface, as in nearly all the Greenland glaciers, was almost entirely destitute of rock débris, the sparsely scattered bowlders which in a broken, zigzag line tottered over the flanks of the ice sheet scarcely revealing the structure of a moraine. Two miles in advance of us the ice was solid, with only knife-edge cracks to indicate where it had parted and to mark the positions of possible past crevasses. It fell easily from the center to



either side, describing that symmetrical dome which was apparent from the water front; seaward it descended with so gentle a slope that over long areas it appeared to the eye only horizontal, and elsewhere the gradient could not have exceeded five degrees. Over this surface the toboggan could be drawn without difficulty, and so few were the hummocks that guy-lines could readily be dispensed with. We were still in the cooler hours of night, or rather of the "day of night," and the sun had made but little impression upon the surface. Here and there the crisp, granular ice showed symptoms of early dissolution, and an occasional water pool marked progress to the gradually advancing hours