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 shajDe must have extended beneath it ; and 

 siijce, by measurements made two days before, I had 

 discovered that fresh-water ice floating in salt water 

 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 we 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. 



mm 



