SCIENTIFIC RESULTS 75 



Farewell in April, where they are plentiful until August. They then 

 decrease rapidly in numbers with autumn, and winter sees these 

 waters more or less free. The only deviation from a course generally 

 parallel to the coast is a string of bergs that are caught in the east 

 Iceland current, to be carried to the vicinity of northern Iceland and 

 possibly farther southeastward. They come mostly from the coastal 

 glaciers north of Scoresby Sound, but a few of them may be from 

 Spitsbergen. The number annually borne east of Iceland, however, 

 IS very small, partly because few are produced either in Spitsbergen 

 or in northeast Greenland. 



There are records of occasional bergs, " erratics " that w^ander 

 from the better recognized paths of travel to be carried hither and 

 thither in irregular tracks. Being relatively large and massive 

 the i)rocesses of melting and erosion often fail to affect their de- 

 struction until they have completed long journeys. The greatest 

 distance that east Greenland bergs have been reported off the coast 

 by the Danish Meteorological Institute is 240 miles southeast of 

 Cape Farewell. Probably several of the reports of ice sighted in 

 the vicinity of the British Isles, or the Faroe Islands, rare phenom- 

 ena but nevertheless authentic, refer to bergs that have drifted from 

 northeast Gr':^enland via the East Iceland current. 



The is icebergs observed along the Greenland coast in the summer 

 of 1928 by the Mar'/ on exj^edition between Cape Farewell and Disko 

 Bay can be assumed, because of their position w^ith regard to the 

 current to have come from east Greenland and none to which that 

 source could most reasonably be ascribed were found northward of 

 Godthaab. The east Greenland bergs were distributed as follows : 

 2 lay about 20 miles southwest of Cape Farewell: 7 off' Arsuk Fjord; 

 8 off Fiskerns's: and tlie northernmost one off' Godthaab. Compar- 

 ing this distribution with the track of the Manon (fig. 1), it w'ill 

 be noted that a few bergs were sighted at each point wdiere the 

 course approached the coast, but none offshore. The coast sectors, 

 south of Godtliaab. not visited jjrobably contained icebergs also, 

 so that a total of 50 bergs is probably a conservative estimate of the 

 number of such bergs then present along that part of the coast. The 

 total absence of any bergs more than 80 miles out from the coast 

 was striking, as tyjucal of their on-shore tendency. 



Our knowledge regarding the probable movements of such bergs 

 after })assing the meridian of Cape Farewell has been placed on a 

 far more certain basis as a result of the current survev which we 

 carried out on the Marion expedition during the summer of 1928. 

 According to Figures 95 and 96, pp. 147-148, bergs less than 30 miles 

 off Cape Farewell will be carried northwestward, parallel to the coast, 

 at a rate of about 14 miles per day. Their rate of travel would con- 

 stantly increase untiL off Cape Desolation, they are being borne north- 

 ward along the coast at 22 miles per day but with the increase in the 

 velocity the width of the current decreases somewhat. Bergs on the 

 outer edge of the current w^ill, of course, not move as rapidly as those 

 nearest its axis and off Cape Desolation. The ice receives its first op- 

 portunity to leave the coastal belt off' Cape Desolation where a branch 

 turns off' to the left, developing into a broad, tortuous drift and losing 

 speed proportic»nally. Icebergs so deflected will move slowly to the 

 westward along these paths at only 4 to G miles per day. The chart 

 shows that anv ice which holds to the coast continues northward in 



