NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 431 



the berg and 8 J fathoms nearer in. Nearly all the flat-topped bergs showed numerous 

 crevasses in their cliffs near their summits, and these were always widest towards the 

 summits, and were irregularly perpendicular in general direction. The flat tops of the 

 bergs had usually rather uneven surfaces, being covered with small hillocks, apparently 

 formed by the drifting of snow, or showing irregularities where they covered over the mouths 

 of crevasses. The surfaces in fact, looked just like those of the " Firn" or "Neve," the 

 cracked snow-fields at the heads of European glaciers, and appeared as if they would be 

 equally dangerous to traverse, except by a party roped together. The second stories 

 of bergs were always covered with snow, which had fallen on them after their 

 emergence. 



The stratified structure of the bergs is best seen in the case of flat-topped rectangular 

 bergs, where an opportunity is afforded of examining at a corner two vertical cliff 

 faces meeting one another at a right angle. The entire mass shows a well-marked 

 stratification, being composed of alternate layers of white opaque-looking, and 

 blue, more compact and transparent, ice. The late Dr E. L. Moss, R.N., Staff- 

 Surgeon on the recent Arctic Expedition, describes a similar stratification as occur- 

 ring in Arctic ice. He had opportunities of examining the ice closely at leisure, 

 and describes each stratum as consisting of an upper white part merging into a lower 

 blue part, the colour depending on the greater or less number and size of the air-cells in 

 the ice. 1 



Towards the lower part of the cliffs, the strata are seen to be extremely fine and 

 closely pressed, whilst they are thicker with the blue lines wider apart, in proportion as 

 they are traced towards the summits of the cliffs. In the lower regions of the cliffs the 

 strata are remarkably even and horizontal, whilst towards the summit, where not 

 subjected to pressure, slight curvings are to be seen in them corresponding to the 

 inequalities of the surface and drifting of the snow. In one berg there was in the strata 

 at one spot the appearance of complex bedding, somewhat resembling that shown in the 

 iEolian calcareous sand formations of Bermuda. The strata were often curved in 

 places, but always in their main line of run, horizontal, i.e., parallel to the original fiat 

 top of the berg. The strata in the cliff at the level of the wash-line of a rectangular berg 

 80 feet in height were so thin and closely packed that they looked almost like the 

 leaves of a huge book at a distance, for by the lap of the waves the softer layers had 

 been to some extent dissolved out from between the harder. In one berg where the face 

 of the cliff was very fiat and seen quite closely with a powerful glass, the fine blue bands 

 were seen to be grouped, the groups being separated by bands in which no lines were 

 visible, or where these were obscured by the ice fracturing with a rougher surface, not 

 with a perfectly even and polished one, as existed where the blue bands showed 

 out. The cliff surfaces, where freshly fractured, showed an irregular jointing and 



1 Observations on Arctic Sea Water and Ice, 1'roc. li<»j. Soc. Load., vol. xxvii. p. 547, 1678. 



