The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1871-12-02

It was past noon when we reached the
Big Glacier of Disco. Lying on the snow
we were glad to rest. We had forded
streams crept around and crawled over
great rocks, waded through deep marshes
covered with moss foot thick, which
yielded to our weight at every stepp, and
followed rocky pathway on the mountain
side so steep that our ankles were blistered
by the pressure of our boots from the angle
of inclination. We were in valley run
ming at right angles to to the sea, thanked
on either side by mountains 5000 feet high,
separated by deep ravines, the beds of win
ter torrents. Judging from the worn face
of the mountains, this great valley has been
the bed of an immense glacier extending
TO the sea In some places the face of the
rocks had been worn smooth, i'll others
there were deep, horizontal indentations,
caused by rocks embedded in the ice, which,
in their passage, cut deeply into the face of
the mountains.
THE GREAT GLACIERS:
y
cier of Disco was before us, filling valley
six hundred feet wide and two hundred
feet deep. The glacier is not less than
twenty. five miles long. At its base there
is subterranean river fifty feet wide, of
red color, and rushing along with deafen-
ing roar. The face of the glacier was much
broken, and at its base and in the river
were large pieces of ice which had fallen
from above. Sun, wind, and rains had
wrought some curious transformations
Just before us stood a four sided column of
ice, like the campanile of Pisa. Standing
fifty feet from the body of the glacier, and
sixty-feet high, it reflected soft, green
tinted light as the sun shone upon it, and
high up on it's front the elements had carv-
ed out a cross.
This excursion permitted us to study the
formations of icebergs and glaciers. 1t is
now settled fact that icebergs are not
frozen water, for were they such, the ques-
ton would arise: Where can be found in
all that Arctic region water-and especially
TreSB Water-CHOuHn 10 10TH SUCH SdSl
masses of icea The accepted theory is,
that icebergs are fragments of glaciers
Glaciers are immense bodies of ice formed
from the SHOWS which have fallen on the
slopes and SUBMITS of mountains, and sol
idified by the pressure of the accumulated
SHOWS of many centuries. BY some law OF
nature these Glaciers move toward the sea.
AS the end projects into the ocean, and
buries itself more and more into the water,
there is a tendency to rise and by the force
of this upward tendency the end breaks off.
and the fragment is an iceberg. And this
theory was demonstrated by our observa-
lions in the present excursion.
The age Of these glaciers is one of their
most marvellous features. In the unknown
past, downy snowflake fell on the noun
, tain slopes of Greenland others were added.
the mass became hardened by the pressure
of its own weight, increasing little by little,
from year to year, and century to century,
till the mass filled the deep valley with the
frozen river. 1t is estimated that a glacier
moves to the sea at the rate of one hundred
feet year; so that a glacier formed in a
valley ten miles from the sea would require
centuries before it would discharge its first
iceberg.-THe Methodist.