It would be difficult to inflict upon a man greater torture than to expose him to such a storm. The effect, after a time, is to make life undesirable. First comes alarm, then pain, then lack of perception. When one dies from freezing, it is the brain which first suffers eclipse. True, the cold has not solidified it, but has made it torpid, like certain animals in the winter-time, with which one may do any thing and they will not resist, being quite incapable of receiving an impression. One of my comrades said, “I can not go any farther; I do not want to; I am sleepy; I can not walk.” Another said, “I am no longer cold; I am quite warm again; shall we not camp?” This proved that there was the greater need of haste and exertion, if we would not all be destroyed.
The whole continent of Greenland is, say, 1200 miles long by 600 broad. This gives 720,000 square miles of superficial area, and, assuming the ice, which covers the greater part of it, to have the very moderate average depth of 500 feet, we have a grand total of 70,000 cubic miles of ice—a result which seems almost fabulous.
It is not uninteresting to know that all this vast accumulation of ice is the property of Denmark. And there are probably few persons who understand fully the loss we suffered when we failed to purchase from that country the earthquake island of St. Thomas; for it was then in contemplation, should the Senate ratify the treaty of annexation, to open negotiations for buying up all these Greenland glaciers and the Iceland Yokuls besides. And there can be little doubt that the Danish king would have gladly sold out the whole of them. A king who does not appreciate the value of an earthquake can hardly be expected to bestow his confidence on glaciers.
CHAPTER II.
GLACIERS AND ICEBERGS.
Before proceeding with our narrative we will dwell a little upon the great phenomena of nature to which the previous chapter called attention.
We have seen that the great sea of ice which covers Greenland, and makes it the Land of Desolation that it is, is formed from snow-flakes. That formation takes place only in certain conditions of temperature, which of course vary with the degrees of latitude.
The formation of glaciers has been for a long time a fruitful source of speculation among men of science. Into these we will not enter at any length, for my purpose is rather to give the results of personal observation and incidents of adventure, than to recite either the facts or reflections of others. Yet a few words of discussion may not be here out of place.
Every reader is aware that in the upper regions of the atmosphere the moisture which is precipitated on the mountain-top assumes the form of snow, while down at the mountain’s base it is rain. In descending a mountain nothing is more common than to pass from one condition to the other—first a storm of dry snow, then moist snow, then water. In Greenland the snow falls dry. The mountains are lofty, and it never rains upon them at all. A fresh layer of snow is laid on every year. Should this continue uninterruptedly, of course the mountains would rise to an indefinite extent. Enormous quantities break loose and roll down the mountain-sides in avalanches; but this is but a small amount in comparison with the deposit. The glaciers are the means of drainage of these great snow-fields. These snow-fields are turned to ice by a very simple process, and the ice flows to the sea.
The surface snow on the mountain is white, dry, and light. Deeper down, it is hard; still deeper, it is clear transparent ice. The clear ice which forms such grand and beautiful arches of blue and green in the glaciers as seen along the Greenland coast, was once powdery snow upon the loftiest mountains, probably in the very interior of the continent. The transformation is an interesting process, and the movement of the ice itself from the mountain to the sea is one of the strange mysteries of nature. With respect to the former, Professor Tyndall has stated the case so clearly that I can not refrain from quoting the following passage from his excellent work entitled “The Glaciers of the Alps:”