Here then was, in reality, the counterpart of the river-systems of other lands. From behind the granite hills the congealed drainings of the interior water-sheds, the atmospheric precipitations of ages, were moving in a mass, which, though solid, was plastic, moving down through every gap in the mountains, swallowing up the rocks, filling the valleys, submerging the hills: an onward, irresistible, crystal tide, swelling to the ocean. The surface was intersected by numerous vertical crevasses, some of considerable depth, which had drained off the melted snow. It was midnight when the explorers approached this colossal reservoir. The sun was several degrees beneath the horizon, and afforded a faint twilight-gleam. Stars of the second magnitude were dimly perceptible in the cold, steel-blue Arctic heavens. When they were within about half a mile of the icy wall, a brilliant meteor fell before them, and, by its reflection upon the glassy surface beneath, greatly increased the magical effect of the scene; while loud reports, like distant thunder or the roll of artillery, broke at intervals from the depths of the frozen sea. On closer inspection it was found that the face of the glacier ascended at an angle of from 30° to 35°. At its base lay a high bank of snow, and the wanderers clambered up it about sixty feet; but beyond this their efforts were defied by the exceeding smoothness of the ice. The mountains, which stood on either hand like giant-warders, were overlapped, and to some extent submerged, by the glacier. From the face of the huge ice-river innumerable little rivulets ran down the channels their action had gradually excavated, or gurgled from beneath the ice; forming, on the level lands below, a sort of marsh, not twenty yards from the icy wall. Here, in strange contrast, bloomed beds of verdurous moss; and in these, tufts of dwarf-willows were wreathing their tiny arms and rootlets about the feebler flower-growths; and there, clustered together, crouching among the grass, and sheltered by the leaves, and feeding on the bed of lichens, flourished a tiny, white-blossomed draba and a white chickweed. Dotting the few feet of green around might be seen the yellow flowers of the more hardy poppy, the purple potentilla, and saxifrages yellow, purple, and white. * * * * * The great glacier of Sermiatsialik is one of the arms, or outlets, of this immense reservoir of ice. It occupies the bed of a valley, varying from three and a half to five miles in width, and attaining at certain points a depth of upwards of three hundred and seventy feet. This valley opens upon the fiord of Sermiatsialik, which is separated from that of Julianshaab by the range of mountains culminating in the peak of Redkammen.