NINE MONTHS IN THE ARCTIC. 143 



against their precipitous sides before she would 

 ground. A vessel, therefore, being dashed against 

 those adamantine walls in a gale of wind, would 

 instantly fly to pieces, and not a seaman would 

 be saved. 



" The distance to which icebergs float from 

 the polar regions on the opposite sides of the line 

 is, as may be supposed, very different. Their 

 extreme limit in the northern hemisphere is 

 judged to be about lat. 40°, though they are oc- 

 casionally seen in lat. 42° N., near the termination 

 of the great bank of Newfoundland, and at the 

 Azores, lat. 42° N., to which they have sometimes 

 drifted from Baffin's Bay. 



" But in the other hemisphere, they have been 

 seen, within the last few years, at different points 

 off the Cape of Good Hope, between lat. 36° and 

 39°. One of these was two miles in circumfer- 

 ence and one hundred and fifty feet high, appear- 

 ing like chalk when the sun was obscured, and 

 having the lustre of refined sugar when the sun 

 was shining upon it. Others rose from two hun- 

 dred and fifty to three hundred feet above the 

 level of the water, and were therefore of great 

 volume below ; since it is ascertained by experi- 

 ments on the buoyancy of ice floating in sea 

 water, that for every cubic foot seen above, there 

 must at least be eight cubic feet below water." 



