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Updated: May 23, 2025
The 'Endurance' was now close to what appeared to be the barrier, with a heavy pack-ice foot containing numerous bergs frozen in and possibly aground. The solid ice turned away towards the north-west, and we followed the edge for 48 miles N. 60° W. to clear it. Now we were beyond the point reached by the 'Scotia', and the land underlying the ice-sheet we were skirting was new.
Some, indeed, speak of a series of Ice-Ages, but we need not discuss the verbal question. It is now beyond question that the ice-sheet advanced and retreated several times during the Glacial Epoch. The American and some English geologists distinguished six ice-sheets, with five intermediate periods of more temperate climate.
Along the Arctic seaboard, homogeneous from Behring Strait nearly to the North Cape, we have the frozen tundra region, with a characteristic tundra culture; pushed now far north since Europe mellowed into a habitable world, but formerly widespread about the skirts of the shrinking ice-sheet.
But as man enters Europe he begins to drop his flints on a soil that we have constant occasion to probe although the floor on which he trod is now sometimes forty or fifty feet below the surface and we obtain a surer glimpse of the fortunes of our race. Most European geologists count four distinct extensions of the ice-sheet, with three interglacial periods.
A few minutes before such an approach would have assured the immediate destruction of the boat. But Harold saw with surprise that, almost simultaneously with the breaking up of the ice-sheet, the fall of blocks from the island had ceased. A moment's reflection showed him the reason of this phenomenon. With the break-up of the ice-field the pressure from behind had suddenly ceased.
It must be remembered that when the limit of the ice-sheet was in Central Germany and Belgium, the climate even of North Africa would be very much more temperate than it is to-day. As the ice-sheet melted, the men who were adapted to living in the temperate zone to the south of it penetrated into Europe, and the long story of the Old Stone Age opened.
Some writers compare them with the Eskimo of to-day, and even suggest that the Eskimo are the survivors of the race, retreating northward with the last ice-sheet, and possibly egged onward by a superior race from the south.
The great lakes of North America are permanent memorials of its Ice-Age, and over more than half the country we trace the imprint and the relics of the sheet. South America, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand had their glaciated areas. North Asia was largely glaciated, but the range of the ice-sheet is not yet determined in that continent.
At last a thaw set in, and Brighteye, awakening on the second day from his noontide sleep, heard the great ice-sheet crack, and groan, and fall into the river. When darkness came he hurried to the water's brink, and, almost reckless with delight, plunged headlong into the pool.
The soft snow in lower reaches of glacier again reduced pace. We fought these untoward events with a will and conquered, but it cut into our provision reserve. Every detail of our food supplies, clothing and depôts made on the interior ice-sheet and over that long stretch of 700 miles to the Pole and back, worked out to perfection.
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