a great noise, heard for several miles and continuous for several days. This glacier, occupying 

 only 7 km along its front and having a front altitude of 88 m above sea level, evidently yields the 

 greatest and most fantastic icebergs of the Northern Hemisphere . Its peculiarity, as is usual 

 with rapid glaciers, is the fact that the icebergs calfed by it are higher than the face of the glacier. 

 Thus, for example, Drigalskii saw in this region an iceberg which towered 149 m above the level of 

 the sea. 



The glaciers, occupying a considerable distance along their fronts but moving slowly, can 

 produce no icebergs at all or produce very few of them, wasting mainly by means of calfing larger 

 or smaller chunks of ice. Thus, for example, again in Greenland, in the environs of Frederikshaab 

 the front of the glacier occupies 20 km of shoreline, but the rate of flow of the glacier is equal to 

 the rate of melting at its end, and because of this, this glacier produces no icebergs. 



In the Northern Hemisphere, one of the largest glaciers in frontal width is the glacier which 

 falls toward Northeast Land (Spitsbergen) from Cape Leigh-Smith to Cape Mohn and which, accord- 

 ing to Nordenskjold, presents an unbroken ice wall inaccessible from the sea about 100 km in 

 length. But the productivity of this glacier is so small that during 1930, for instance, we on the 

 Knipouich did not see a single iceberg in the nearby regions. 



The Qariaq and the Jakobshaven Glaciers of Greenland fall into Disko and Nordost Bays, 

 which are located exactly across from the Greenland cross valley, down which the main flow of 

 mainland ice is directed. Because of this, these glaciers, along with numerous other glaciers fall- 

 ing into these same bays, annually yield, according to Smith, 5,400 (out of 7, 500) large icebergs 

 (i.e., such that their size would be sufficient to pass Davis Strait and then descend into the 

 Newfoundland area without melting or disintegrating. ) 



The productivity of glaciers also depends on local conditions. The glaciers of Northern 

 Greenland flowing into the North Arctic Ocean (the northernmost glacier of the Northern 

 Hemisphere — Jungersen Glacier — is located near 80° north), have arms reaching far out to sea 

 like the glaciers of the antarctic, due to the severe climatic conditions and the nearness of the pack 

 and paleocrystic ice.* 



The size of the icebergs, as we have seen, depends partly on the velocity of the glaciers flow, 

 but, of course, it is also determined by its vertical and horizontal measurements. In this relation, 

 the icebergs of the Northern Hemisphere can in no way be compared with antarctic icebergs. 



The largest Greenland icebergs (of 87 icebergs measured by Drigalskii) was 149 m high. 

 Krummel mentions an iceberg 17 to 22 m high, 13 km long, and 6 km wide, encountered near Baffin 

 Land in 1882. The weight of such an iceberg would be about 23 million tons. 



The icebergs of eastern Greenland are considerably smaller. The largest of them, not far 

 from its place of inception, was 70 m high and about 1 km long. The size of the largest iceberg re- 

 ported by the International Ice Patrol, near Newfoundland (where West Greenland icebergs are car- 

 ried almost exclusively) was: height, 87 m; length, 565 m. 



*It is considered that the arm of the Petterman Glacier (81° north, 62° east), which is the 

 longest one in the Northern Hemisphere (several meters high above the surface of the water), ex- 

 tends the float at least 40 km out to sea. Such arms, which break themselves a path through old 

 piled-up fast ice, break off once every 15 to 20 years. 



125 



