74 ORIGIN OF ICEBERGS. 



washes — water of green, orange, scarlet, crimson, and purple 

 wash — the crags and steeps ; strange metallic tints gleam in 

 the shaggy caverns, copper, bronze, and gold : endless grace 

 of form and outline. 



These icebergs — so beautiful in summer, so grand and 

 awful under a wintry aspect — project above the surface of 

 the sea like high hills composed of rugged and steep rock. 

 Navigators have frequently stated that they have seen them 

 rising from four to five hundred feet above the water, and 

 extending more than a mile in length. A Danish navigator 

 examined an iceberg on the eastern coast of Greenland, and 

 estimated its circuit, at its base, at four thousand feet. In 

 height it was one hundred and twenty feet above the sea- 

 level. He calculated that its contents amounted to upwards 

 of nine millions of cubic feet. 



The reader may be interested to know the origin of 

 these stupendous floating bergs, whence they come, how 

 they are formed, and their ultimate destination. It has 

 been ascertained, beyond all doubt, that they originate in 

 the land, being nothing more than fragments of glaciers — 

 a name given to immense masses of ice, or appendages to 

 snow mountains. By far the larger number of these are 

 formed on the coast of Greenland. The mountains are 

 always covered with snow ; the valleys between them are 

 filled with ice, derived from the higher portions of the 

 mountains, and are thus converted into enormous glaciers. 

 If the extent of all the shores of Greenland, in which the 

 glaciers advance to the very sea, were put together, it is 

 probable they would constitute a coast-line exceeding six 

 hundred miles in length. These are the birth-places of the 

 icebergs. The average height or depth of the ice at its free 

 edge, or seaward, in these valleys is about twelve or fifteen 

 hundred feet. As the glaciers advance farther into the sea, 

 the rise and fall of the tide undermine the base, and enor- 

 mous masses become detached and fall into the sea with a 



