56 HEADING FOR MELVILLE BAY. 



base of measurement was three hundred and fifteen feet 

 high, and a fraction over three quarters of a mile long. 

 The natives told me that it had been grounded for 

 two years. Being almost square-sided above the sea, 

 the same shape must have extended beneath it ; and 

 since, by measurements made two days before, I had 

 discovered that fresh-water ice floating in salt w r ater 

 has above the surface to below it the proportion of 

 one to seven, this crystalized piece of Eric's Greenland 

 had stranded in a depth of nearly half a mile. A rude 

 estimate of this monster, made on the spot, gave me 

 in cubical contents about twenty-seven thousand mil- 

 lions of feet, and in weight something like two thou- 

 sand millions of tons. I leave the reader to calculate 

 for himself its equivalent in dollars and cents, were 

 it transported to the region of ice-creams and sherry- 

 cobblers, and how much of it would be required to 

 pay off the national debt, and how much more than 

 half a century it would withstand the attacks of the 

 whole civilized world upon it, for all those uses to 

 which luxury-loving man puts the skimmings of the 

 Boston ponds. 



The tide at length carried off the ice which impris- 

 oned us, and in the evening of the 22d w r e were again 

 threading our way among the bergs and islands. 

 Cape Shackleton and the Horse's Head lay off the 

 starboard bow, and we were shaping our course for 

 Melville Bay. 





