Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/187

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mer de glace in a steadily flowing stream, it has at length filled up the entire valley in which it rests for a distance of ten miles; and its terminal face, which, as heretofore stated, is one mile across, is now two miles from the sea. The angles and measurements of October, 1860, were repeated in July, 1861, as I shall have occasion hereafter to illustrate, and the result showed the rate of progress of the glacier to be upwards of one hundred feet annually. It will thus be seen that more than a century will elapse before the front of the glacier arrives at the sea; and since six miles must be traveled over before it reaches deep water, at least five hundred years will transpire before it discharges an iceberg of any considerable magnitude. The movement of this glacier is much more rapid than others which I have explored. From "My Brother John's Glacier" the margin of the mer de glace sweeps around behind the lofty hills back of Port Foulke, and comes down to the sea in a discharging glacier above Cape Alexander. This has a face of two miles, and some small icebergs are disengaged from it. Thence, after surrounding Cape Alexander, embracing it as with the arm of a mighty giant, it comes again into the water on its south side; and, continuing thence southward in a succession of broad and irregular curves, a frozen river is poured out from this great inland sea of ice through every valley of the Greenland coast from Smith's Sound to Cape Farewell, and from Cape Farewell on the Spitzbergen side northward to the remotest boundary of the explored. Northward from "My Brother John's Glacier" it makes a broad curve in the rear of the hills hitherto mentioned, and opposite Van Rensselaer Harbor it is between fifty and sixty miles from the sea, where