Icebergs iq^on Drift. 447 



with an admixture of earth and stones. Being struck with 

 the appearance of the icebergs, he landed upon one. Many 

 of the stones were a foot in diameter. They had sunk in the 

 ice, and small pools of water had formed around them. 



It would seem that the occurrence of foreign materials 

 upon the icebergs is to be observed principally near their 

 source. Captain Benjamin Pendleton remarked that, upon a 

 large number of the icebergs in the extreme southern lati- 

 tudes, and especially near the South Shetlands, bowlders 

 and fragments of rock of various sizes could be seen. He 

 compared their magnitude to the boxes and bales of goods 

 lying in a country store. It was as common, he said, to see 

 rocks and bowlders in the icebergs at the South Shetlands as 

 to see them at Stonington Point. Those seen at a distance 

 from the Shetlands, near Cape Horn, for instance, rarely if 

 ever contained them. 



Mr. Low says, in his letter, that he has seen large rocks 

 and earth attached to icebergs, but saw them near the shore. 

 He never saw earth or rocks on floating icebergs far from the 

 shore. 



Dr. Gilchrist, of the navy, who was one of the surgeons 

 of the Exploring Expedition, informed me that they saw no 

 bowlders or fragments of rocks upon icebergs until near the 

 great barrier of ice, and in close proximity with the land, at 

 which time, as is well known from Mr. Wilkes's synopsis, 

 they met with icebergs covered with mud and rock. 



These facts are entitled to observation, in connection with 

 the fact stated by our geologists, that the great mass of the 

 drift will be found within fifteen or twenty miles from its 

 original place. 



Enormous blocks, however, are sometimes carried to a con- 

 siderable distance from their original position. 



Captain William Beck, formerly of Stonington, informed 

 me that, in latitude 63° south, and about one hundred miles 

 from the South Shetlands, he saw an immense mass of round 

 rock attached to a floating iceberg. The diameter of tiie 

 rock he judged to be at least twenty feet. It appeared to him 



