This ice-cliff is about twenty-five miles from the mouth of the
Pitmegea, at a place where the hills run their spurs out to the banks
of the river, closing the picturesque valley that stretches away to the
sea-coast in an almost unbroken width of a mile. A glacier faces
southward, and receives the full benefit of the sunlight during the
short polar summer. Gales have deposited particles of soil and débris
of plants, along with their seeds, upon the surface of the ice to a
depth of from four inches to a foot. The snow-fall of winter soon
vanishes before the June sun, while the light covering above the
glacier preserves it intact. Vegetation is warmed into life in a
remarkably short time, and the brown coat left by the receding snow is
almost miraculously transformed to a robe of green and studded here and
there with bright polar flowers, there being buttercups, dandelions,
yellow poppy, bright astragals, gentians, daffodils and marguerites.
The latter are small and unobtrusive, making a showing in a modest way
as if they wished to apologize to their sister flowers for their
appearance among them. Like beautiful orphan girls, one cannot resist a
compassionate tenderness of feeling toward them. But these innocent
little flowers, chaste as the ice field upon which they grow, bloom in
the polar garden with as much right as the glacier's gentian. Besides
flowers, there are the hardy grasses whose roots penetrate the light
covering of soil to the ice-bed, whence they derive their nourishment.
A few Arctic willows are to be seen, but they only grow about a foot in
length, and trail upon the ground. The Pitmegea river is gradually
cutting into the glacier, receding from its opposite bank and leaving a
bed of gravel behind. During the summer the ice melts away, leaving the
protruding soil above it like the eaves of a house; when it protrudes
too far for the strength of the grass roots, it topples over into the
river. At the freezing in September, icicles freeze from the
overhanging sod to the river ice below, forming a narrow portico four
miles in extent.