I have spoken of the glacier front as a wall, a cliff, and a coast-line. As a coast-line it is winding; as a wall or cliff it is perfectly vertical; but it is far from smooth. On the contrary, it presents the most fantastic collection of forms that can be conceived of—caves that are apparently limitless, peaks like church spires in symmetry, Gothic arches, clefts that wind away until they are lost in deep blue. And in this blue we see the most perfect of all transparent hues, changing too with every moment, and subtle as the colors of the opal. Talk of painting it! the “light of a dark eye in woman” would not be more difficult. The green of the caves is not less subtle, nor less beautiful. This green is observed wherever the ice overhangs the water. In the sunlight the surface is pure white, except where there has occurred a recent fracture; and the effect is that of the most delicate satin, in all its changes of surface, produced by the different angles in which the light is reflected to the eye. We enjoyed a most excellent opportunity of observing all these phenomena while passing over, as we went only at half speed, and spent almost an hour in reaching the opposite side. Near the centre, and not far from the front of the glacier, we found the deepest water, the color of which changed, soon after passing the centre, from a light green to a dirty brown. The cause of this was soon explained. The eastern side of the valley, in which the glacier rests, is much deeper than the other side, and the waters from the surface of the _mer de glace_, and the glacier itself, which find their way down through the chasms, gather in the deepest portion of the valley, and, rushing on over the rocks beneath the ice, reach, finally, the front of the glacier, where they bubble up like a huge, seething caldron—a Stygian pool of fearful aspect. This muddy water discolors that side of the fiord all the way to the sea; a circumstance which I was quite at a loss to account for until I had actually witnessed the cause of it, and seen the _Panther_ carried, by the force of the current, bodily off from the glacier against the action of her helm. I have mentioned the irregularity of the line of the glacier front. It presented numerous projecting angles. Near the centre, it forms almost a right angle. Thus do we observe how much more rapidly the centre of the glacier moves than its sides.