THE QUEEN OF THE KENNEL.
Oosisoak has other traits befitting greatness. He has sentiment. He has chosen one to share the glory of his reign, to console his sorrows, and to lick his wounds when fresh from the bloody field. Oosisoak has a queen; and this object of his affection, this idol of his heart, is never absent from his side. She runs beside him in the team, and she fights for him harder than any one of his male subjects. In return for this devotion he allows her to do pretty much as she pleases. She may steal the bone out of his mouth, and he gives it up to her with a sentimental grimace that is quite instructive. But it happens sometimes that he is himself hungry, and he trots after her, and when he thinks that she has got her share he growls significantly; whereupon she drops the bone without even a murmur. If the old fellow happens to be particularly cross when a reindeer is thrown to the pack, he gets upon it with his forefeet, begins to gnaw away at the flank, growling a wolfish growl all the while, and no dog dare come near until he has had his fill except Queen Arkadik, (for by that name is she known,) nor can she approach except in one direction. She must come alongside of him, and crawl between his fore-legs and eat lovingly from the spot where he is eating.
So much for my dogs. I shall doubtless have more to say about them hereafter, but there is only a small scrap of the evening left, and I must go back to "My Brother John's Glacier."
Halting our teams near the glacier front, we proceeded to prepare ourselves for ascending to its surface. Its face, looking down the valley, exhibits a somewhat convex lateral line, and is about a mile in extent, and a hundred feet high. It presents the same fractured surfaces of the iceberg, the same lines of vertical decay caused by the waters trickling from it in the summer,—the same occasional horizontal lines, which, though not well marked, seemed to conform to the curve of the valley in which the glacier rests. The slope backward from this mural face is quite abrupt for several hundred feet, after which the ascent becomes gradual, decreasing to six degrees, where it finally blends with the mer de glace which appears to cover the land to the eastward.
At the foot of the glacier front there is a pile of broken fragments which have been detached from time to time. Some of them are very large—solid lumps of clear crystal ice many feet in diameter. One such mass, with an immense shower of smaller pieces, cracked off while we were looking at it, and came crashing down into the plain below.
The surface of the glacier curves gently upward from side to side. It does not blend with the slope of the mountain, but, breaking off abruptly, forms, as I have before observed, a deep gorge between the land and the ice. This gorge is interrupted in places by immense boulders which have fallen from the cliffs, or by equally large masses of ice which have broken from the glacier. Sometimes, however, these interruptions are of a different character, when the ice, moving bodily forward, has pushed the rocks up the hill-side in a confused wave.
CLIMBING THE GLACIER.
The traveling along this winding gorge was laborious, especially as the snow-crusts sometimes gave way and let one's legs down between the sharp stones, or equally sharp ice; but a couple of miles brought us to a place where we could mount by using our axe in cutting steps, as Sonntag had done before.
We were now fairly on the glacier's back, and moved cautiously toward its centre, fearful at every step that a fissure might open under our feet, and let us down between its hard ribs. But no such accident happened, and we reached our destination, where the surface was perfectly smooth—an inclined plain of clear, transparent ice.
SURVEYING THE GLACIER.