PHYSICAL AND CLIMATAL CONDITIONS. 113 



remain. Those which remain until autumn are reduced 

 to mere skeletons ; but if they survive until winter, they 

 again grow in dimensions, owing to the accumulation 

 upon them of snow and new ice. Those that I have seen 

 early in July were large and massive in their proportions. 

 The few that remained in September were smaller in size 

 and cut into fantastic and toppling pinnacles. Vaughan 

 records that on the 30th of May, 1858, he counted in the 

 straits of Belle-Isle 496 bergs, the least of them sixty feet 

 in height, some of them half a mile long and two hundred 

 feet high. Only one-eighth of the volume of floating ice 

 appears above water, and many of these great bergs may 

 thus touch the ground in a depth of thirty fathoms or 

 more, so that if we imagine four hundred of them moving 

 up and down under the influence of the current, oscillating 

 slowly with the motion of the sea, and grinding on the 

 rocks and stone-covered bottom at all depths from the 

 centre of the channel, we may form some conception of 

 the effects of these huge polishers of the sea-Hoor. 



Of the bergs which pass outside of the straits, many 

 ground on the banks off Belle-Isle. Yaughan has seen a 

 hundred large bergs aground at one time on the banks, 

 and they ground on various parts of the banks of New- 

 foundland, and all along the coast of that island. As 

 they are borne by the deep-seated cold current, and are 

 scarcely at all affected by the wind, they move somewhat 

 uniforndy in a direction from N.E. to S.W., and when 

 they touch the bottom the striation or grooving which 

 they produce must be in that direction. 



In passing through the straits in July, one sees a great 



number of bergs. Some are low and flat-topped with 



perpendicular sides, others concave or roof-shaped like 



great tents pitched on the sea; others are rounded 



9 



