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Yet the nightmare of the glacial ice-cap still pressed down on him from the hills, in full vision, and no one could look out on the dusky and oily sea that lapped these spectral islands without consciousness that only a day's steaming to the northward would bring him to the ice-barrier, ready at any moment to advance, which obliged tourists to stop where Laps and reindeer and Norse fishermen had stopped so long ago that memory of their very origin was lost.
Therefore the arrangements on Mars appear to be a rich and a barren season on each hemisphere, the growth being caused by the melting of the polar ice-cap, which sends floods down even beyond the Equator. If we could imagine the same thing on earth we should have to think of pieces of land lying drear and dry and dead in winter between straight canal-like ditches of vast size.
But Cosmo Versal smiled at this explanation, and said in reply: "The whole Arctic ice-cap is dissolved, and the condensation of the nebula is at hand. But there is worse behind. When the wave comes back it will rise higher." As the time for the next flood-tide grew near, anxious eyes were on the watch to see how high the water would go.
When the next great ice-cap shall sweep down from the north pole upon these beautiful alpine flowers they will have to travel somewhere. There is manifestly as much necessity for them to get out of the way as for the rest of the flora. How will they manage to get down the mountains into the lowlands, and traverse uncongenial plains and deserts, to find other and far-distant alpine homes?
Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less, when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending?
To explore the Ferrar Glacier from a geological point of view and find out the nature of the interior ice-cap must, Scott determined, be attempted at all costs, and this journey to the west he decided to lead himself. In the south it was evident that without dogs no party could hope to get beyond the point already reached.
The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the earth, is also a constant quantity. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends continuously and permanently much farther north than 80A deg. or 81A deg.. Mt.
This side cone, past which your way to the summit lies, was active after the breaking-up of the main ice-cap of the glacial period, as shown by the comparatively unwasted crater in which it terminates and by streams of fresh-looking, unglaciated lava that radiate from it as a center.
For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme northern portions of South America.
On its arched crest snow collects, and its under layers are converted by pressure into ice. The mountain is therefore crowned by a snow-covered ice-cap. Where there are flat hollows round the summit, in these also snow is piled up as in bowls. It glides slowly down with its own weight, and by pressure from above is here also converted into ice.
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