THE ICEBERG. 37 



generally for several hours every da)*, seems, according to my observa- 

 tion, to have the effect of blowing the bergs out to sea ; and then 

 they may be seen sailing majestically along in long lines out of 

 the ice-fjords. Often, however, isolated bergs or groups of bergs 

 will float away south or north. Bergs from the ice-streams of 

 Baffin Bay will be found in the southern reaches of Davis Straits ; 

 while others, bearing debris which could only have been accumu- 

 lated in South Greenland, will be found frozen in the floes of 

 Melville Bay, or Lancaster Sound. It is a common mistake, but 

 one which a moment's reflection would surely dissipate, that bergs 

 found in the south must all have come from the north, and that 

 those further north must have come from the regions still farther 

 northward. The winds and the currents waft them hither and 

 thither, until by the force of the waves they break into fragments 

 and become undistinguishable from the oozy fragments of floes 

 around them. Often, however, they will ground either in the fjord 

 or outside of it, and in this position remain for months, and even 

 years, only to be removed by pieces calving or breaking off from 

 them, and thus lightening them, or forced off the bank where they 

 have touched bottom by the force of the displaced wave caused by 

 the breaking off of a fresh berg. Ice much exposed to the sea only 

 breaks off in small ice-calves, but not in bergs. This calving will 

 sometimes set the sea in motion as much as 16 miles off. The colour 

 of the berg is, of course, that of the glacier; but by the continuous 

 beating of the waves on it the surface gets glistening. The colour 

 of the mass is a dead white, like hard-pressed snow, which in reality 

 it is, while scattered through it are lines of blue. These lines are 

 also seen in the glacier on looking down into the crevasses, or at the 

 glacier-face, and are in all probability caused by the annual melting 

 and freezing of the surface-water of the glacier. Then another fall 

 of snow comes in the winter ; then the suns of summer melt the 

 surface to some slight extent ; this freezes, forming an ice different 

 in colour from the compressed snow-ice of the glacier, and so on. 

 I am aware, however, that this is a subject of controversy ; and this 

 view of mine is only brought forward as a probable explanation, 

 suggested to me as far back as 1861, when I first saw glaciers in tho 

 upper reaches of Baffin Bay and on the western shores of Davis 

 Strait, and long before I was aware that this si naked or veined 

 character of glacier-ice had been a subject of dispute. 1 



1 These blue stripes are several feet in dimension, and in them are gem rails 

 found tin; "dirt bands" of foreign matter (stones, gravel, clay, 8ut\ the remains 

 of the moraine. Dr. Rink thinks thai the blue stripes are formed by a rilling up 

 <-f the fissures in the inland Lee with water—" perhaps mix. d with -now, gravel, 



1 7 C, 5 



