Icebergs iipoJi Drift. 431 



Nearer the south pole, the glaciers are not seen in the 

 valleys and between the mountains alone, but along the whole 

 shore. Captain Benjamin Pendleton, of Stonington, who 

 cruised Palmer's Land for some hundred miles, and who, 

 indeed, sent Palmer to explore the continent which has re- 

 ceived his name, informed me that the ice rises from the 

 shore, in some places, apparently 1500 feet; while, in the 

 interior, the mountains rise like the Andes. The land is so 

 concealed by the ice, that only a point is here and there seen. 

 In the account of the Expedition of the Astrolabe, D'Urville 

 says, that in passing along the newly-discovered continent of 

 Adelie, they skirted, for twenty leagues, a perfectly vertical 

 wall of ice, elevated 120 to 130 feet above the waves, whose 

 surface was perfectly level. Here we have the source of 

 some of the enormous level icebergs of which I shall hereafter 

 speak. In other places, a coast was presented from 12 to 

 1800 feet in height, which was completely levelled upon its 

 summit by the ice and snow, having only ravines and bays 

 along the shores. Captain Ross describes the glaciers on the 

 coast seen by him in the 70th degree of south latitude, as pro- 

 jecting many miles into a deep ocean, and presenting a per- 

 pendicular face of cliffs. 



The fixed icebergs of the northern and southern polar re- 

 gions being proper glaciers, we must expect to find them 

 governed by the same laws, and exhibiting the same general 

 phenomena, as the glaciers of the alpine summits which have 

 been so thoroughly explored. 



Like the glacier, the fixed iceberg is formed by the yearly 

 accession of the winter's snow, which is transformed into neve 

 or granular snow, or, as Mr. Emmons calls it, metamorphic 

 snow, and then into glacial ice, by the absorption and con- 

 gelation of the rain or water, which proceeds from the melting 

 of the neve or snow. In the Antarctic regions, the annual 

 accession must be very great. Mr. Davison, of Stonington, 

 informs me that, when they first reach the South Shetlands, 

 after seal, in the early part of the summer, the snow upon 

 the islands is nearly twenty feet deep. Even as far north as 



