Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/17

Rh of true day. A few foxes ventured near our tracks, and some crows winged their way landward, but these were all the signs of animal life that gave movement to the landscape. About two miles from the ice front a great pyramidal rock mountain or nunatak split the glacial stream, causing it to swell into gently rising waves and crests, which mounted terracelike one above the other, without, however, materially breaking the continuity of the surface. We found progression over this billowy surface slow and fatiguing; it was difficult to hold the toboggan in position, as the steel runners gained no purchase upon the adamant polish of the ice. It swayed from side to side, undulating like the fins of a fish, and keeping us in a constant state of adjustment. As the slope increased at an elevation of about fourteen hundred feet, crevasses gradually took the place of the fissure splits, and it was found advisable to make use of the rope. We tied ourselves together in single line, keeping about twelve feet apart. There were few crevasses of greater width than the length of our toboggan, and most of these were of insignificant depth, yet there was enough danger in them to warrant a sharp lookout. The snow bridges were particularly treacherous, and their presence was sometimes only made known through an unexpected plunge. Cautiously avoiding these so far as it was possible, and the numerous ugly holes which only too frequently interrupted our course, we finally reached the basin, eighteen hundred feet above the sea, out of which the glacier emerges. We had accomplished our mission; the great glacier lay all below us, and above were only the sky and the upper snow fields which tirelessly fade off to unite with the sky.

A pleasanter ice party than this one can hardly be conceived. With a temperature that was neither warm nor cold, and with just sufficient point in it to give to it that exhilarating quality which impels to work; with a lingering midnight sun sending its warm illumination through a seemingly endless rift of clouds and bergs; a mountain and ocean panorama of almost matchless grandeur around you; a solitude immeasurable and undefinable—these are the elements which united in an exercise to make it forever memorable.

A few days after this first experience we were called upon to do a piece of glacial work the memory of which, unfortunately, associates itself with one of those sad incidents of travel which are seemingly destined, from time to time, to break upon the rugged path of exploration. When all but ready to leave the icebound northern shores for the more hospitable havens of the south, whither we had hoped to convey, unbroken by disaster, the untarnished record of a most successful exploration, intelligence was brought to our quarters that a member of our party