Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/472

 prized, more cherished; and the recollection which I shall carry with me of this charming valley, and the silvery lake, and the gushing rivulets, and the grottoed glacier, will be enhanced when I name them in remembrance of the fairest forms that ever flitted across the memory of storm-beaten traveler, and the fairest fingers that ever turned Afghan wool into a cunning device to brighten the light of a dingy cabin!

Upon going ashore at Gale Point, I discovered traces of Esquimaux much more recent than those at Gould Bay and other places on the shores of Grinnell Land. Indeed they were of such a character as to cause me strongly to suspect that the shore is at present inhabited. The cliffs are composed of a dark sandstone which, to the northward of the Point, breaks suddenly away into a broad plain that slopes gently down to the water's edge. This plain is about five miles wide, and is bounded at the north much as at the south, by lofty cliffs, which rise above the primitive rocks back of Cape Isabella. The plain was composed of loose shingle, covered over in many places with large patches of green, through which flowed a number of broad streams of water. These streams sprang from the front of a glacier which bulged down the valley from the mer de glace. It was about four miles from the sea, and bounded the green and stony slope with a great white wall several hundred feet high, above which the snow-covered steep of the mer de glace led the eye away up to the bald summits of the distant mountains. As I looked up at this immense stream of ice it seemed as if a dozen Niagaras had been bounding together into the