But there is no use in prolonging the story of this awful ride. It seemed
to us to last for days upon days, though, in fact, the worst of it was
over within twelve hours after we were lifted from our moorings in the
valley. The tumbling stream gradually broadened out as it left the region
of the high mountains, and then we found ourselves in a district covered
with icy hills of no great elevation. But we could still see, by glances,
as the stream curved this way and that, the glittering peaks behind. It
was an appalling thing to watch many of the nearer hills as they suddenly
sank, collapsed, and disappeared, like pinnacles of loaf sugar melting
and falling to pieces in a basin of water.
Edmund said that all of the ice-hills and mounds through which we were
passing no doubt owed their existence to pressure from behind, in the
belt where the sun never rose, and where the ice was piled up in actual
mountains. These foothills were, in fact, enormous glaciers thrust out
toward the sunward hemisphere.
After a long time the now broad river widened yet more until it became a
great lake, or bay. The surface of the planet around appeared nearly
level, and, as far as we could see, was mostly covered by the water.
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