IX.] GLACIER ICE-BLOCKS. 310 



place iu the mass of the ice, which again within a comparatively 

 short time results in the excavation of the deep ice-fjord. The 

 largest iceberg, which, so far as I know, has been measured in 

 that part of the Polar Sea which lies between Spitzbergen and 

 Wrangel Land, is one which Barents saw at Cape Nassau 

 on the rth August 1596. It was sixteen fathoms high, and had 

 grounded in a depth of thirty-six fathoms. In the South Polar 

 Sea icebertjs occur in o;reat numbers and of enormous size. If 

 we may assume that they have an origin similar to those 

 of Greenland, it is probable that round the South Pole there 

 is an extensive continent indented by deep fjords. 



2. Glacier Icc-hlocks. These, which indeed have often been 

 called icebergs, are distinguished from true icebergs not only 

 by their size, but also by the way in which they are formed. 

 They have seldom a cross section of more than thirty or forty 

 metres, and it is only exceptionally that they are more 

 than ten metres high above the surface of the water. They 

 originate from the " calving " of glaciers which project into 

 the sea with a straight and evenly high precipitous border. 

 Such glaciers occur in large numbers on the coasts of Spitzbergen, 

 and they are there of the same height as similar evenly-cut 

 o-laciers on Greenland. According to the statement of the 

 Dane Petersen, who took part both in Kane's expedition in 

 1853-55 and in Torell's in 1861, the glaciers, for instance, at 

 Hinloopen Strait in Spitzbergen, are fully equal, with respect 

 to their size and the height of their borders above the sea-level, 

 to the enormous and much be written Humboldt glacier in Green- 

 land. In Spitzbergen too we find at two places miniatures of 

 the Greenland ice-currents, for instance the glacier which filled 

 the North Haven in Bell Sound, another glacier which filled 

 an old Dutch whaling haven between Recherche Bay and Van 

 Keulen Bay, a glacier on the north side of Wahlenberg Bay 

 and perhaps at that part of the inland ice marked in my 

 map of the expedition of 1872 as a bay on the east coast 

 of North-east Land. It is even possible that small icebergs 

 may be projected from the last-mentioned place, and thence drift 

 out into the sea on the east coast of Spitzbergen. 



Glacier-ice shows a great disposition • to fall asunder into 

 smaller jjieces without any perceptible cause. It is full of cavi ties, 

 containing compressed air, which, when the ice melts, bursts 

 its attenuated envelope with a crackling sound like that of the 

 electric spark. It thus behaves in this respect in the same 

 way as some mineral salts which dissolve in water with slight 

 explosions. Barents relates that on the ^^th August 1596 he 

 anchored his vessel to a block of ice which was aground on the 

 coast of Novaya Zemlya. Suddenly, and without any perceptible 

 cause, the rock of ice burst asunder into. hundreds of smaller 



