260 ACCOUNT OF THE AllCTIC REGIONS. 



Spitzbergen is possessed of every character which 

 is supposed to be necessary for the formation of the 

 largest ice-bergs : — high mountains, deep exten- 

 sive valleys, intense frost, occasional thaws, and 

 great falls of sleet and snow ; yet here a berg is 

 rarely met with ; and the largest that occur are not 

 to be compared with the productions of Baffin's 

 Bay. The reason of the difference between Spitz- 

 bergen and Old Greenland, as to the production 

 of ice-bergs, is perhaps this : That while the sea 

 is generally deep, and the coast almost continually 

 sheltered by drift-ice at the foot of the glaciers in 

 Baffin's Bay"; in SpitzbtVgen, on the contrary, they 

 usually terminate at the water's edge, or where the 

 sea is shallow, so that no very large mass, if dis- 

 lodged, can float away, and they are at the same 

 time so much exposed to heavy swells, as to occasion 

 dismemberments too frequently to admit of their at- 

 taining a very considerable magnitude. 



Some ice-bergs, it is possible, may have their ori- 

 gin in deep-sheltered coves or narrow bays, which, 

 from tlieir contracted outlets, may prevent the ice 

 annually formed from being disembogued, and may 

 thus form a secure basement for a superstructure of 

 any magnitude. Such coves being at length filled, 

 the ice may protrude beyond its capes, and give rise 

 to floating ice-bergs. 



MiiUer, in his " Summary of Voyages made by 

 the Russians on the Frozen Sea," relates a circum- 



