Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/182

 decided to the mutual satisfaction of the learned, but it is nevertheless true. Rendu truly remarks:—

"There is a multitude of facts which would seem to necessitate the belief that the substance of glaciers enjoys a kind of ductility, which permits it to mould itself to the locality which it occupies, to grow thin, to swell and to narrow itself like a soft paste."

And this, true of the Alpine passes, is true also of the Greenland valleys. A great frozen flood is pouring down the east and west slopes of the Greenland continent; and, as in the Alps, what is gained in height by one year's freezing is lost by the downward flow of the mobile mass.

And this movement is not embarrassed by any obstacle. The lower chains of hills do not arrest it, for it moulds itself to their form, sweeps through every opening between them, or overtops them. Valleys do not interfere with its onward march, for the frozen stream enters them, and levels them with the highest hills. It heeds not the precipice, for it leaps over it into the plain below,—a giant, frozen waterfall. Winter and summer are to it alike the same. It moves ever forward in its irresistible career,—a vast, frozen tide swelling to the ocean. It pours through every outlet of the coast ranges, down every ravine and valley, overriding every impediment, grinding and crushing over the rocks; and at length it comes upon the sea. But here it does not stop. Pushing back the water, it makes its own coast line; and, moving still onward, accommodating itself to every inequality of the bed of the sea, as it had before done to the surface of the land, filling up the wide bay or fiord, expanding where it expands, narrowing where it narrows, swallowing up the islands in its slow and