over land in the space of a few hours; and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground in six hundred feet of water!  The denudation of the land was upon a grand scale.  All superficial accumulations were swept away, and the bedrock was exposed.  It was described, in graphic language, how all irregularities and depressions were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles’ area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance of having been planed by A Plane.”

The account translated from the Icelandic says that the mountainlike ruins of this majestic glacier so covered the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water was discoverable, even from the highest peaks.  A monster wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable stretch of land, too, by this strange irruption: 

“One can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier of ice when it is mentioned that from Hofdabrekka farm, which lies high up on a fjeld, one could not see Hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell six hundred and forty feet in height; but in order to do so had to clamber up a mountain slope east of Hofdabrekka twelve hundred feet high.”

These things will help the reader to understand why it is that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.  The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.

The Alpine glaciers move—­that is granted, now, by everybody.  But there was a time when people scoffed at the idea; they said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it.  But proof after proof as furnished, and the finally the world had to believe.

The wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they timed its movement.  They ciphered out a glacier’s gait, and then said confidently that it would travel just so far in so many years.  There is record of a striking and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained in these reckonings.

In 1820 the ascent of Mont Blanc was attempted by a Russian and two Englishmen, with seven guides.  They had reached a prodigious altitude, and were approaching the summit, when an avalanche swept several of the party down a sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them (all guides) into one of the crevices of a glacier.  The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer which was strapped to his back—­it bridged the crevice and suspended him until help came.  The alpenstock or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way.  Three men were lost—­Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier, and Auguste Tairraz.  They had been hurled down into the fathomless great deeps of the crevice.