1870 GLACIERS— ICEBERGS. 1 65 



at a distance of about three miles from the sea, its 

 front being at least five miles across. It is there 

 joined by a smaller glacier running down a parallel 

 valley. 



The melting of all the inferior glaciers north of 

 Smith Sound before they reach the sea is very re- 

 markable, and must be due to the vast power of the 

 ever present sun during the summer being in excess of 

 the small amount of precipitation during the winter. 



Were they to reach the sea, meeting there with 

 water which is never, even during the summer, suffi- 

 ciently warm to melt fresh-water ice, they would force 

 their way onward along the ground until their sea-face 

 or front attained its least elevation, and icebergs were 

 broken off by rising through excess of buoyancy. This 

 may account for the extreme lowness of the face of 

 the Petermann Glacier, which attains a mean height of 

 only twenty-five feet above the water-level, and also 

 for the great number of crevasses near its front, as 

 described by Lieutenant Fulford and Dr. Coppinger. 1 



Dr. Kane, although he estimates the height of the 

 surface of the Humboldt Glacier as ' about three hun- 

 dred feet,' remarks : ' So far from falling into the sea, 

 broken by its weight from the parent glacier, it (the 

 iceberg) rises from the sea.' But as the icebergs in 

 Smith Sound are never more than about 150 feet in 

 height above water when afloat, this estimate of the 

 height of the sea-face of the glacier is probably that of 

 its south side near the shore where Dr. Kane and 

 others visited it, and not of the sea-face itself at a 

 distance from the side. 



' l See Appendix. 



