NATURE IN ACADIE. 67 



coast, and these necessitated constant attention on the 

 part of those in charge of the vessel. The bergs were 

 of every imaginable form and size. One was roughly in 

 the form of a pyramid with the apex broken off, the 

 height from the water-line being nearly three times as 

 much as the breadth. 



Most of the larger icebergs evidently consisted of 

 masses detached from the solid ice-field, and these 

 floated in a variety of inclinations ; one or two rode in 

 their former horizontal position, but the majority were 

 inclined to one side or another, and some so much so 

 that they presented roughly a " house-top " shape, the 

 original surface constituting one slope and one of the 

 fractured sides the other. On some of the ledges of 

 these masses the sea-birds could be seen congregated in 

 hundreds upon hundreds. The largest berg of all, how- 

 ever, was seen shortly before we entered the harbour of 

 St. John's. It was an immense block, roughly oblong in 

 shape, from the mass of an ice-field, and was floating 

 nearly in its original position, its surface being worn by 

 furrows and corrugations, and much soiled from some 

 cause. The surface of the mass was estimated to be at 

 least an acre in extent ; it projected a considerable 

 height from the water, and as all icebergs have two- 

 thirds of their mass below the surface, and only one- 

 third above, the weight of this huge block must have 

 been truly prodigious. The beautifully pinnacled and 

 turreted icebergs common further southward are rare 

 so far north as this, where the sun and ocean lack the 

 warmth necessary to fashion such picturesque and 

 beautiful architecture from these rough-hewn unwieldy 

 blocks. 



Among the birds frequenting the coast I noticed 

 several great black-backed gulls, American herring-gulls 

 and kittiwakes, and also a solitary Iceland gull (one of 

 the white-winged group) just on entering the harbour of 

 St. John's. About the fishing-grounds were many 

 greater shearwaters, which were usually to be observed 

 in parties, sometimes as many as fifty in number ; they 

 frequently settled upon the surface of the water and 

 sometimes dived. 



