September 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLKDGE ♦ 



257 



in the same way the Korreds resemble the Trolds. They 

 are shoi-t and stumpy, with shaggy hair, small deeply-set 

 eyes, and wrinkled f;ices. Their voices are thin and cracked, 

 their hands like a cat's paws, and their feet are horny like a 

 goat's. They are spiteful and vicious. They are very fond 

 of dancing, but woe to the belated shepherd who comes 

 across them during their midnight revels I They dance 

 around the ilolmen (stone-tables, also called by this name 

 in Devon and Cornwall), and any one who is forced to join 

 in their roundel must keep it up till cockcrow. The poor 

 victim " is mercilessly whirled about till he falls down 

 breathless and exhausted, amidst the peals of laughter of 

 the dwarfs, who all vanish at break of day." * 



Breton folk-songs tell us of underground passages called 

 querlich's holes or Korred's grottoes, where great treasures 

 are kept. Sometimes the dwarfs take them from one place 

 to another; and if any one passes by at the time they are 

 allowed to take a handful, but no more. Should a rash 

 mortal venture to fill his pockets the money vanishes, and 

 he " is assailed by boxes on the ear from invisible hands." 



A Breton farmer thought he would try his luck ; and one 

 moonlight night, when the dwarfs were absent on a gay 

 frolic, he stole some treasure out of a Korred's hole. He 

 hastened home, and hid it under some tiles in the kitchen 

 floor, afterwards covering the whole place with burnt ashes 

 and ember.'i. 



About midnight the farmer heard the little imps creeping 

 in stealthily through a hole in the wall. But what a howl- 

 ing and lamentation they set up when they trod on the 

 burning embers. The farmer chuckled to himself at their 

 discomfiture, but his mirth was soon changed to consterna- 

 tion when they revenged themselves by smashing every piece 

 of crockery he possessed. At daybreak they all vanished, 

 saying, " In lannik-ann-Trevon's house we burnt our horny 

 feet ; but we made a fine mess of his crocker}'." t 



NORTH ATLANTIC ICEBERGS.: 



CEBERGS are a great source of danger to 

 Transatlantic navigation from March to August 

 every year. This is the season in which the 

 expected proximity of these dread masses of 

 ice demands from the mariner an increased 

 vigilance. Sometimes, but veiy seldom, bergs 

 have been fallen in with much earlier. On 

 New Year's Day, 1844, a berg was passed by the Stdly in 

 45 N. 48 W., and this j'ear, on January 3, one was reported 

 in almost the same position. Tiie northern ice barrier is 

 broken up by the increasing power of the sun's rays as he 

 travels northward along the ecliptic. Fields of ice, some- 

 times having an area of one hundred square miles, are 

 detached, and a free exit afforded for the imprisoned icebergs. 

 Icebergs and field ice are borne to the southward by the 

 cold current that follows the bend of the land from Labrador 

 to Florida. Field ice is formed on the sea surface during 

 the Arctic winter, but bergs have their origin far inland, 

 and are the growth of years. Greenland glaciers glide 

 gradually down their gentle slopes into the sea, and the 

 upward pressure of the water breaks off their snouts to 

 form the icebergs of the North Atlantic. Some hardy 

 Norwegians are about to cross Greenland, and intend to 

 make a special study of the movement of the coast glaciers 



* Grimm, "Teutonic Mythology," p. 466. In Norse legends 

 reappears the trick of engaging a trold in conversation till the snn 

 is risen ; when he looks round and sees the sun he splits in two. 

 The same oocvu-s in the story of Rumpelstilzchen. 



t Keightley's " Fairy Mythology." 



j From the Ziverj/ool Journal of Commerce, 



and this setting afloat of bergs. Ancient glaciers have 

 written their story on the mountains of Great Brifcrin, and 

 bergs were formed a little way off the west coast of Ireland 

 during the glacial epoch. 



There exists a marked difierence in form betnreen the 

 bergs of the two hemispheres. Arctic bergs are of irregular 

 shape, with lofty pinnacles, cloud-capped towers, and 

 glittering domes, whereas the southern bergs are fiat-topped 

 and solid-looking. The former reach the sea by narrow 

 fiords, but the formation of the latter is more regular. It 

 is well to give these splendid specimens of Nature's hand- 

 work a wide berth, for they frequently turn somersaults 

 owing to the wasting away of their immersed portions. 

 Immense pieces of ice fell from a berg on to the deck of a 

 ship that had approached too close to it while in this transi- 

 tory state, carrying away her masts and maiming some of 

 the crew. Again, ships have been sunk by colliding with 

 submerged portions of bergs, extending from their visible 

 volume like reefs of rocks from a bold sea coast. Hayes 

 compared one that he saw to the Colossus of Rhodes. His 

 ship could have sailed under the arch of ice formed in the 

 heart of the berg. 



North Atlantic bergs are neither so large nor so numerous 

 as those met with in the Southern Ocean, between the Falk- 

 land Islands and the Cape of Good Hope. In 1854-.'i5 an 

 enormous ice Island was drifting in about 42 S. 24 W., for 

 several months, and wa.s passed by many ships. It was 

 300 feet high, 60 mUes long, and 40 miles wide, and was in 

 shape like a horseshoe. Its two sides enclosed a sheltered 

 bay measuring 40 miles across ! A large emigrant ship, the 

 Guiding Star, sailed into this icy bay and was lost with all 

 hands. A similar but smaller mass of ice was met with in 

 the North Atlantic by the Agra. She ran into a bay 

 formed in the centre of an iceberg, in 42 N., which was 

 H mile across, and she experienced great difficulty in beating 

 out again. 



A cubic foot of ice weighs about 930 ounces, but the same 

 volume of sea water weighs 1,280 ounces. Hence ice floats 

 on water, and but one-ninth of the volume of a berg is 

 exposed to view. There are several well-authenticated 

 instances of bergs one thousand feet high having been 

 sighted in the Southern Ocean, so that this would give the 

 total height of them a-s about nine thousand feet I — a fairly 

 good-sized mass of solid water. In May last year the 

 Inchgreen passed close alongside of a berg that Captain 

 Miller estimated had an altitude of se%-en hundred feet 

 above the sea surface and was seven miles long. Bergs 

 have often been seen grounded on the banks of Newfound- 

 land, where the deep-sea lead gave a depth of 650 feet. 

 Ross saw several stranded in BaiBn's Bay, where the depth 

 was 1,400 feet. 



Bergs are unusually numerous in some years, and a con- 

 nection is said to have been traced between the frequency 

 of bergs in the North Atlantic and the low temperature in 

 our islands during the summers of some years. The ship 

 Swanton passed three hundred bergs in 1842 in 43 N. 50 W. 

 She narrowly escaped destruction during the night, as she 

 passed between two huge bergs that almost grazed her sides. 

 Captain (afterwards Rev. Dr.) Scoresby, while whaling in 

 the northern icy sea, counted no less than five hundred 

 bergs under way for the open waters of the Atlantic. Last 

 June the steamship Concordia passed seventy-eight large 

 bergs in a short space of time, as they lay aground in the 

 Straits of Belleisle. ThLs year the ice is both late and 

 scarce ; in 1883 it was very abundant. No forecast can be 

 made as to the probability of frequency of bergs. A vessel 

 has been so firmly fixed in the ice in the month of March 

 in 44 N. 45 W. that her master was able to take a stroll 

 on the ice. In 1841 several ships, stopped by ice in mid- 



