SCIENTIFIC RESULTS 



77 



current was setting strongly toward the nortli. This berg, therefore, 

 and the 17 others seen to the southward, could not have drifted there 

 from the northern or western sides of Davis Strait but must have 

 come from the east coast of Greenland via Cape Farewell. 



We occasionally read statements such as the following translated 

 from the Deutsche Seewarte Segelhandbuch (1910, p. 296): ""The 

 ice girdle along the west coast of Greenland spreads out northwest- 

 ward crossing over Davis Strait and then sets south along the Labra- 

 dor coast following the path of the current toward the Newfoundland 

 Banks.-' Johnston (1915, p. 40) says that many of the icebergs 

 sighted east of Flemish Cap in the North Atlantic are east Greenland 

 bergs carried there by one of the branches of the cold current. In 

 discussing the behavior of pack ice it has already been shown that 

 there is little likelihood of anv east Greenland ice reachino- over to 



The Westernmost Limits of East Greenland Icebergs 



Figure 37. — The most westerly positions in which ic^ebergs from the 

 slaciers of east Greenhxnd have been sighted around Cape B^arewell. 

 The heavy line marks the position of bergs in .July, 1922, and the 

 slender line, bergs in .Tune. 1917. ( From records over a long period 

 kept by the Danish Meteorological Institute.) 



American waters. The main obstacle to such a journey is not so 

 much lack of transportation as inability to survive long enough in 

 the relatively warm otf-shore waters. Icebergs being of large bulk 

 and mass are, however, able to withstand the process of melting for 

 a much longer time than is sea ice and therefore are occasionally 

 found in places very remote from their sources. Thus the files of the 

 Dani.sh Meteorological Institute show, such as April, 1913, a berg was 

 .sighted about 200 miles west-southwest of Ivigtut, Greenland, a 

 position about halfway across Davis Strait. Again in June and 

 July, 1917, bergs were sighted in latitude 59° 30', longitude 51° 00', 

 and latitude 59° 30', longitude 52° 00'. These positions when plotted 

 on the dynamic current map. Figure 95, directly coincide with one of 

 the southwestern branches and while the extraordinary long jour- 

 neys accomplished by icebergs in rare instances forbids any positive 



