Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1895 — Miles of Solid Ice. [ARTICLE]

Miles of Solid Ice.

The front of the glacier is about three miles wide, but the sheer middle, berg-producing portion that stretches across the inlet from side to side, like a huge green-and-blue barrier, is only about two miles wide, and its height above the water is from 250 to 800 feet. But soundings made by Captain Carroll show that 720 feet of the wall is below the surface, while a third unmeasured portion is buried beneath the moraine detritus, that is constantly deposited at the foot of it. Therefore, were the water and rocky detritus cleared away, a sheer precipice of ice would be presented nearly two miles long and more than a thousand feet high. Seen from a distance, as you come up the fiord, it seems comparatively regular in form ; but it is far otherwise ; bold, jagged capes jut forward into the fiord, alternating with deep re-entering angles and sharp, craggy hollows with plain bastions, while the top is roughened with innumerable spires and pyramids and sharp, hacked blades leaning and toppling, or cutting straight into the sky.