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Updated: May 12, 2025
His mind had wandered into its favourite channels, and for the moment he forgot the main subject of conversation, while the white men regarded him with some surprise, his comrades with feelings of interest not unmingled with awe. "But," he continued, "I know where the sea of ancient ice-blocks is just now. I came past it in my kayak, and can guide you to it by the same way."
The ice-blocks were cut out and placed above one another in the form of a dome; a large block at the top made the vault. Snow served for mortar and filled up the chinks. It soon hardened and made a single block of the entire structure. It was reached by a narrow opening, through which the doctor squeezed himself painfully, and the others followed him.
Every year in December a so-called ice-palace was built for the band, of clear blocks of ice. Once given a design, ice-architecture is most fascinating and very easy. Instead of mortar, all that is required is a stream of water from a hose to freeze the ice-blocks together, and as ice can be easily chipped into any shape, the most fantastic pinnacles and ornaments can be contrived.
The ocean-tides were rolling huge ice-blocks up and down, which beat against his palisade with the noise of thunder, and seemed to threaten its immediate destruction. But the work stood firm. The piles supporting the piers, which had been thrust out from each bank into the stream, had been driven fifty feet into the river's bed, and did their duty well.
After passing a forest of alders, they began to ascend, passing by some blocks of ice that had loosened themselves from the side of the mountain and lay across their path; they had to step over these ice-blocks or walk round them.
To reach its crest at that point, some three hundred feet above the glacier, was comparatively easy, but when it was reached there stretched ahead of us miles and miles of ice-blocks heaved in confusion, resting at insecure angles, poised, some on their points, some on their edges, rising in this chaotic way some 3,000 feet.
I placed ice-blocks in a circle, pouring boiling water between each two blocks to melt the points of contact, and in half an hour they had frozen into one solid lump. I and a friend proceeded like this till the ice-walls were about four feet high, spaces being left for the door and windows.
"Onward, then! When I can no longer walk, I can swim. Hold fast, Schnell!" Onward, in the dark, ice-cold water, bravely onward, with his friend upon his back! Higher and higher rose the waves! Now they reached his shoulder! "Hold fast to my hair, Schnell, we must swim!" With herculean strength he swam through the dark, wild waters, and dashed the ice-blocks which rushed against him from his path.
The burghers scoffed at the idea that Parma could bridge the Scheldt, or that his bridge, if built, could resist the ice-blocks that would come down in the winter. But he built his bridge, and it resisted the ice-blocks. An ingenious Italian in Antwerp devised the destruction of the bridge, and the passage of relief-ships, by blowing up the bridge with a sort of floating mines.
He would like to name that ridge Karstens Ridge, in honor of the man who, with Walter's help, cut that staircase three miles long amid the perilous complexities of its chaotic ice-blocks. When we reached the Parker Pass all the world beneath us was shrouded in dense mist, but all above us was bathed in bright sunshine.
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