PICNIC ON AN ICEBERG. 8 1 



<jolors were flying from the icy turrets, and the wild young 

 midshipmen were shouting from its walls. For two hours 

 or so they hacked and clambered the crystal palace, frolicked 

 and feasted, drank toasts to the King and the ladies, 

 and laughed at the thought of peril where all seemed 

 so fixed and solid. As if in amazement of such rashness, 

 the grim Alp of the sea made neither sound nor motion. 

 A profound stillness reigned on its shining pinnacles and in 

 the blue shadows of its caves. When the youngsters, like 

 thoughtless children, had played themselves weary, they 

 went down to their boat. As if the time and distance were 

 measured, they were scarcely out of harm's way when 

 the mighty iceberg collapsed and broke into a myriad 

 fragments, which filled the surrounding waters. This 

 was, no doubt, the first and last day of amusement on an ice- 

 berg by the daring young seamen." 



Icebergs are not affected by the swell of the sea, which 

 breaks up the largest fields of ice in the space of a few hours ; 

 they rise and fall with a tremendous noise, though their size 

 ^nd form remain the same. But, when acted upon by the 

 sun or a temperate atmosphere, they become hollow and 

 fragile. Few icebergs are destroyed in the Northern seas; 

 a large number get as far as the great banks of Newfound- 

 land, which is occasionally crowded with them. 



The fields of ice that float in the Polar Seas are often 

 twenty or thirty miles in diameter, and some hundreds of feet 

 in thickness. It is calculated that upwards of twenty-thou- 

 sand square miles of drifting ice come down every year 

 along the coast of Greenland into the Atlantic, moving on 

 •during the winter at the rate of about five or six miles 

 a day. The Resolute exploring ship, which was abandoned 

 in Melville's Straits, on account of its being enclosed firmly 

 in a vast field of ice, was afterwards found in Bafiin's Bay, 

 having been carried a thousand miles from its former posi- 

 tion by the drift of an icefield three hundred thousand square 



