THE CALVING OF ICEBERGS 33 



moving mass portions are broken off as icebergs. 

 The face of the Humboldt glacier, the largest of 

 these tentacles (Map A^ on the edge of the north- 

 west coast, just south of lat. 80 N.), is an 'abrupt 

 and threatening precipice' 300 ft. high and sixty 

 miles in breadth. One of the most prolific berg- 

 forming glaciers on the west coast stretches across 

 the head of the Jakobshavn Ice-fjord (lat. 69 N.), 

 a few miles to the east of the Jakobshavn Settle- 

 ment. It has been calculated that the daily dis- 

 charge of ice through this ice-fjord amounts to 

 432,000,000 cubic feet. The ice discharged annu- 

 ally from the Jakobshavn Ice-fjord would, it is 

 stated, make a mountain two miles long, two miles 

 broad, and a thousand feet high. The surface of 

 the water, as seen from the hummocky coast behind 

 the Settlement, is a continuous mass of ice; ice- 

 bergs, some floating, some stranded, are huddled 

 together in disorderly array suggesting the fall of 

 a stupendous avalanche into the waters of the fjord 

 (Fig. 1 1). At the western end of the fjord the 

 icebergs set out to sea, drifting, it may be, many 

 hundred miles before they melt or come to rest on 

 the shore of Newfoundland, or even farther south, 

 breaking up like ships aground. It may well be 

 that some of the icebergs encountered during a 

 voyage to the St Lawrence or to New York began 

 their journey in the Jakobshavn Fjord. Others 

 make shorter voyages and, after drifting across 

 Disko Bay or into the Vaigat Strait, end their course 

 in home waters. In size the Greenland icebergs 

 vary enormously : the highest surpass those in the 



