LIFE NEAR THE ICE-FJORDS. 47 



any earth, rocks, or other land-matter on them. Though still believ- 

 ing that this has been exaggerated to support their theories by some 

 writers, ignorant, unless by hearsay, of the nature of icebergs, 1 I am 

 inclined to think that I was in error. 



Towards the close of my voyage, in 1861, I had occasion to 

 ascend to the summit of many bergs when the seamen were water- 

 ing the vessels from the pools of water on their summits ; and I 

 almost invariably found moraine, which had sunk by the melting 

 of the ice into the hollows, deep down out of sight of the voyager 

 sailing past, but which would have been immediately deposited 

 if the berg had been capsized. In 1867 I saw many bergs with 

 masses of rock on them, and only at the mouth of Waigat one with 

 a block of trap (?) so large, that it looked, even at a distance, like a 

 good-sized house. The Greenland glaciers — or defluents of the inland 

 ice — carry little moraine. The termininal moraines are therefore 

 little marked in comparison with what a glacier of the same size 

 would deposit in the Alpine or other mountain regions abounding 

 in glaciers. Indeed, the Swiss glaciers in almost no degree repre- 

 sent, even on a small scale, the great Greenland glaciation. It is 

 unique. 



6. Life near the Ice-fjords. — In the immediate vicinity of the 

 Jacobshavn ice-fjord (and I take it as the type of the whole) ani- 

 mals living on the bottom were rare, except on the immediate shore 

 or in deep water ; for the bergs grazed the bottom in moderately 

 deep water to such an extent as almost to destroy animal and 

 vegetable life rooted to the bottom. In this vicinity bunches of 

 alga} were floating about, uprooted by the grounding bergs ; and the 

 dredge brought up so little material for the zoologist's examination 

 that, unless in deep water, his time was almost thrown away. 

 Again, the heads of the inlets, unless very broad and open to the 

 sea, are bare of marine life, the quantity of fresh water from the 

 sub-glacial stream and the melting bergs being such as to make 

 the neighbourhood (as in the Baltic) unfavourable for sea-animals. 

 Some inlets are said to be so cold that fish leave them. I have not 

 been able to confirm this in the Arctic regions. When stream- 

 emptying lakes fall into the head of these fjords, having salmon in 

 them, then seals ascend into the lakes in pursuit of them. Other 

 localities, owing to the capricious distribution of life, would be barer 



1 I have found, however, that much of the "discoloration " in bergs is caused 

 by the brown leaves of the Cassiope tetragona and other plants, growing among 

 the rocks abutting on the glaciers, and blown down upon them. The supposed 

 influence of icebergs in dispersing plants by carrying their toots and seeds in 

 moraine I bav< shown to be in reality very little.— (' Ocean Highways,' 1873.) 



