Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/435

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Hans brought us some auks; and, before going to work, we drew around a large rock, of which we made a table, and partook of a substantial dinner of Carl's preparation, washing it down with purest water from the glacier, while listening to the music of gurgling streams and the song of birds.
 * tak, and joined him. Jensen quickly shot a deer, and

The face of the glacier had undergone much change. Blocks of immense size had broken from it, and lay strewn over the valley at its base; while the glacier itself had pressed down the slope, crowding rocks, and snow, and the débris of ice before it in a confused, wave-like heap. The progress toward the sea had been steady and irresistible.

The journey to the top of the glacier was much more difficult than in the previous autumn, the snow having in a great measure melted away, exposing the rocks, and embarrassing us in the ascent of the glacier's side, as well as of the gorge. Every thing was wet and mucky, overhead as well as under foot. The glacier-surface was shedding water from every side, like the roof of a house in a February thaw; and the little streams which flowed down its side, joining the waters of the melting snow, trickled underneath the glacier and reappeared in rushing torrents in the valley below from the glacier front; and thence poured into the lake, and from the lake to the sea.

I was fortunate in finding my stakes all standing; and, having brought up the theodolite, I repeated the angles which, with Sonntag, I had taken the previous October. These angles, when afterwards reduced, exhibited a descent of the centre of the glacier, down the valley, of ninety-six feet.

Chester Valley has in former times been quite a re