THE NOETHERN SEAS. 289 



seals, porpoises, and whales; then this part of the Gulf Stream turns to 

 the left, descends toward Jan Mayen aod Iceland, and passes between 

 the latter island and the eastern shore of Greenland. By this return 

 current lloating wood is carried from the Gulf of Mexico and stranded 

 ui)on the northern shore of Iceland ; a deserted ship seen twice by the 

 expedition proved its direction and rapidity, which coasting- alon.y' the 

 eastern shore of Greenland it also brings to Iceland large fields of ice, de- 

 tached from the belt which renders the island of Jan Mayen inaccessible, 

 and perhaps extends to Spitzbergen. This gloomy bordering- of ice, which 

 l^revents the mariner from approaching- the shore to which it adheres, is 

 called " fast" or land ice, the debris broken oft" by the waves or by storms 

 forms the field ice; which is generally not very thick, and the salt wa- 

 ter of winch it is composed loses somewhat of its saline properties 

 in solidifying-. The icebergs have an entirely different origin, thej' are 

 the offspring- of the glaciers, and are exclusively formed of fresh water. 

 They are often several hundred feet in height, only about an eighth of 

 which appears above the surlace of the water some of them are almost a 

 thousand feet in diameter and are the most formidable moving- masses 

 to be found in nature. These flotillas of ice mountains are principally 

 encountered in the arm of the sea separating Greenland from America. 

 They descend with the current which glasses through Davis Strait, and 

 are sunk so deeply into the sea that very often they are carried by the 

 current against the wind. It is a singular spectacle to see the berg ad- 

 vance contrary to the superficial current produced by the action of the 

 wind, which the English call the " drift." There is a kind of eddy, formed 

 by the current descending Davis Strait, which eddy or connter-curreni 

 ascends northward along the west coast of Greenland, and here may be 

 seen many of these floating mountains whirling about. It may readily 

 be conceived that these enormous masses, borne southward bj' the cur- 

 rent, would not melt before reaching- the route pursued by the transat 

 lantic steamers between Xew York and England. They are the terror ol 

 captains and passengers. A. sailor is constantly on the watch, and at 

 regular intervals calls out to the captain " No icebergs, sir." The loss 

 of many large vessels, which have suddenly disappeared, with no indi- 

 cation of a storm at the time, has been justly attributed to these float 

 ing rocks, which no marine chart can record. It is a difficult matter to 

 sail clear of an iceberg in foggy weather. From the observations taken by 

 the expedition of La Eeine Hortense, relative to the course of the desert- 

 ed vessel, which floated round the southern point of Greenland, and was 

 stranded in one of the bays on the west coast of that country, followiug 

 the eddy formed by the current from Davis Strait, I should judge that 

 M. Duperrey and 31. Finlay carry the Gulf Stieam too t;ir below Iceland, 

 extending too much the counter-current between that island and Green- 

 land, for according to their charts the disabled vessel descended south- 

 ward entirely out of the latitudes of the land ice, near which it was first 

 seen. 



If you were to open the memoir of Dr. Eink, of Copenhagen, page 115 

 of the twenty-third volume of the Eojal Geographical Society, you would 

 see there represented frozen rivers emptying- into the sea, deep valleys 

 filled with ice, like our Alpine glaciers. When these masses of ice, im- 

 lielled by an irresistible force, which causes them to flow like ductile 

 metal, are no longer sustained by the laud and project out into the sea, 

 they break off with a loud noise and thus nature forms her icebergs. 

 One of these fragments, says Dr. Eink, if stranded on the shore would 

 form a mountain over a hundred feet high. The explorers of La Eeine 

 Hortense saw some three times the height of Mount Valerien above the 

 19 s 



