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land mass - to pour out into unknown Arctic
space - its studepndous volume of glacial solid.

I had looked in my own mind for some
such phenomenon - should we be fortunate enough
to reach the Northern Coast of Greenland
but now that it was before me I could
not realise it. In spite of the beautiful
analogies // which Forbes and [left blank] have developed //
between the glacier and the river - I could
not comprehend at first - this complete substitution of
ice for water. In a hydrological (hydrographic)
point of view - I was looking at the counter=
part of the great North and South flowing
river systems of Arctic Asia and America - but
there were no vast alluvians - no forest
or animal traces borne down by liquid
torrents, -- Here was a plastic moving
semi solid mass - obliterating life - swallow-
ing rocks and islands and ploughing
its way with irrestistable march through the
depth of an investing sea.

From the nearest rock to which
it could be approached with any thing like
safety, an island could be seen already
half covered by the solid waters,
and great lumps of ice were constantly falling
like rocks upon its unburried portion
where they split into a thousand fragments.
Repose was not the characteristic of this
glacier - every feature indicated activity
energy movement. It surface was margined
by crevasses expanding as they neared its
margin into deltiform branches, but these
were crossed nearly at right angles - by
long continuous lines of fracture - which as
they approached the margin seem to lose
their support from below and fell in a
succession of escalades or steps.