IV.] • ICE AND ICEBERGS. 139 



a perpendicular face but with a long ice-slope covered with clay, 

 sand, and gravel. 



The inland-ice on Novaya Zemlya is of too inconsiderable 

 extent to allow of any large icebergs being formed. There are 

 none such accordingly in the Kara Sea,^ and it is seldom that 

 even a large glacier ice-block is to be met with drifting about. 



The name ice-house, conferred on the Kara Sea by a 

 famous Russian man of science, did not originate from the large 

 number of icebergs,^ but from the fact that the covering of 

 ice, which during winter, on account of the severity of the cold 

 and the slight salinity of the surface-water, is immensely thick, 

 cannot, though early broken up, be carried away by the marine 

 currents and be scattered over a sea that is open even during 

 winter.^ Most of the ice formed during winter in the Kara- Sea, 

 and perhaps some of that which is drifted down from the Pola: 

 basin, is on the contrary heaped by the marine currents against 

 the east coast of Novaya Zemlya, where during early summer it 

 blocks the three sounds which unite the Kara Sea with the 

 Atlantic. It was these ice-conditions which caused the failure of 

 all the older north-east voyages and gave to the Kara Sea its 



1 Sometimes, however, icebergs are to be met with in the most nortlierly 

 part of the Kara Sea and on the north coast of Novaya Zemlya, whither 

 they may drive down from Franz Josef Land or from other yet unlvnown 

 Polar lands lying farther north. 



2 In most of the literary narratives of Polar journeys colossal icebergs 

 play a very prominent part in the author's delineations both with the pencil 

 and the pen. The actual fact, however, is that icebergs occur in far 

 greater numbers in the seas which are yearly accessible than in those in 

 which the advance of the Polar travellers' vessel is hindered by impene- 

 trable masses of ice. If we may borrow a term from the geography of 

 plants to indicate the distribution of icebergs, they may be said to be more 

 boreal than/»o/«;' forms of ice. All the fishers on the coast of Newfound- 

 land, and most of the captains on the steamers between New York and 

 Liverpool, have some time or other seen true icebergs, but to most north- 

 east voyagers this formation is unknown, though the name iceberg is often 

 in their narratives given to glacier ice-blocks of somewhat considerable 

 dimensions. This, however, takes place on the same ground and with the 

 same justification as that on which the dwellers on the Petchora consider 

 Bolschoj-Kamen a very high mountain. But although no true icebergs 

 are ever formed at the glaciers so common on Spitzbergen and also on 

 North Novaya Zemlya, it however often happens that large blocks of ice 

 fall down from them and give rise to a swell, which may be very dangerous 

 to vessels in their neighbourhood. Thus a wave caused by tlie faUing of 

 a piece of ice from a glacier on the 23rd (13th) of June, 1619, broke the 

 masts of a vessel anchored at Bell Sound on Spitzbergen, threw a cannon 

 overboard, killed three men, and wounded many more (Purchas, iii., 

 p. 734). Several similar adventures, if on a smaller scale, I couM relate 

 from my own experience and that of the walrus-hunters. Care is taken 

 on this account to avoid anchoring too near the perpendicular faces of 

 glaciers. 



3 It may, however, be doubted whether the v:hole of the Kara Sea is 

 completely frozen over in winter. 



