' ' MARION ' ' EXPEDITION TO DAVIS STRAIT AND BAFFIN BAY 23 



At noon, after an opportunity had been g-iven the Danes and the 

 natives to visit the Mm/'ion, we got under way and stood out of the 

 tiny harbor, so picturesque with its kyaks and other native boats 

 and its numerous small ice masses brought in by wind and tide from 

 the bay. Upon leaving tlie harbor the massed bergs just off the 

 mouth of the Jacobshavn ice fiord were visited. A few minutes 

 were spent examining the great ice wall formed by the congestion of 

 icebergs and in obtaining from a dory photographs of it like the one 

 shown in Figure 18. 



At 1.45 p. m. the Marion was headed for Ata, a small village 32 

 miles to the northward on Prince Island, where a native guide to 

 conduct a partj^ up into the inland ice was to be received. From 

 4.48 to 5.25 p. m. the ship drifted off Ata while the pilot and guide, 

 a Greenlander named Peter Peterson, made ready, came out in his 



AN ICEBERG JAM 



Figure 18. — The Marion ci-uisina- off the mouth of Jacobshavn Fiord on August 9, 1928, 

 found the bergs so tightly paiked together that not even a ship's boat could penetrate 

 beyond the outer line. Cin tlie average of twice montlil.v in summer, usually about the 

 time of the spring tides, large niimljers of these bergs float free. 



kyak, and w^as taken aboard. At 8.10 p. m. the ship anchored in 

 Port Quervain Harbor, near the south end of Ekip-Sermia Glacier, 

 which produces large numbers of very small bergs. This glacier 

 runs down steeply from the inland ice and is broken up by innumer- 

 able crevasses wdiere it passes over a rock spur. Apparently only this 

 breaking up process prevents it from forming large bergs like those 

 that push seaward from the Jacobshavn ice fiord. 



The sea wall of this glacier was about vertical, and near its center 

 was a great ice cavern, probably the end of a tube serving farther 

 inland as the conduit pipe for a subglacial stream. A strong millcy 

 current setting out from under the ice was carrying away rapidly all 

 the bergs and small ice pieces as fast as they were calved. Shots 

 fired into the glacier from the Mariori's 3-inch gun brought down a 

 few tons of ice from weakened and overhanging cornices, but the 

 firing was really without appreciable effect. Spontaneous calving, on 



