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The interior with which it communicated, and from which it issued, was an unsurveyed mer de glace, or sea of ice, of apparently boundless dimensions; and from one part of this great cliff he saw long lines of huge bergs floating slowly away. Here, we think, is ice enough and of sufficient dimensions to account for the largest bergs that were ever beheld.
Happily, however, they did not suffer any further material disturbance, and the main body keeping at a short distance from the land until the tide had fallen, the bergs seemed to be once more firmly resting on the ground.
Leaving our drivers to get the reindeer and sledges across as best they could, the Major, Dodd, and I started on foot, picking our way between huge irregular blocks of clear green ice, climbing on hands and knees over enormous bergs, falling into wide, deep crevices, and stumbling painfully across the chevaux-de-frise of sharp splintered fragments into which the ice had been broken by a heavy sea.
The steamer could not get nearer the glacier for fear of the floating bergs, and a small boat could only approach with deadliest peril at the risk of being crushed beneath the falling ice or swamped by the wild division and upheaval of the water that it caused.
But, although our friends bore the proximity of these city gunners with great patience for a while, an event soon occurred which brought matters to a focus. A flock of geese were seen approaching from the eastward, and La Salle, cautioning the boys, crouched down in his boat and "called." Peter followed suit, and so did the party on the bergs.
Then, stooping to pass the overhanging ice-cliff that here also disputed the pack upon one's back, we went down to the long, long stretch of jagged pinnacles and bergs, and our intricate staircase in the masonry of them. Shovelling was necessary all the way down, but the steps were there, needing only to be uncovered.
This was not only proved by the deep sea lead, but by the examination of bergs which, once stranded, had floated off and become reversed, exposing an accumulation of white friable mud frozen to their bases, which abounded with these vegetable remains."
But the largest and most beautiful of the bergs, instead of thus falling from the upper weathered portion of the wall, rise from the submerged portion with a still grander commotion, springing with tremendous voice and gestures nearly to the top of the wall, tons of water streaming like hair down their sides, plunging and rising again and again before they finally settle in perfect poise, free at last, after having formed part of the slow-crawling glacier for centuries.
Thus passed an entire day and night. So compact was the ice around them, that the mariners passed from one vessel to the other on it, with the utmost confidence. No apprehension was felt so long as the wind stood in its present quarter, the fleet of bergs actually forming as good a lee as if they had been so much land. On the morning of the second day, all this suddenly changed.
Off the end of ice tongues or the edge of ice walls. 5. Off the old pinnacled ice north of Black Island. 6. From a boat near the Barne Glacier. 7. From a boat around grounded bergs. I have now to mention various matters of lesser importance to which I should like attention given if time and circumstances permit. The Hut Galley is not in a very satisfactory condition.
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