240 



Arctic Explorations. 



of t"he varieties of ice and its changing conditions. He speaks 

 of the great pack which occupies the middle area of Baffin's Baj, 

 as if lying in the eddj between the polar current on the west 

 side and counter current on the east; of many bergs in the bay 



200 feet and upwards in height, of some " over 300 feet/' an 



unusual altitude'even in those iceberg regions; of 280 glaciers 



of the first m^agnitude within sight at one time;* of Jacob's 

 Bightj a fiord on the Greenland coavst near lat. 71° and Ion. 66°, 

 as "perhaps the most^remarkable place for the genesis of ice- 

 bergs on the face of the globe ;"f of the immense ''Humboldt 

 glacier," in Western Greenland, which ranges on the coast from 

 Cape Agassiz in lat. 79"" 20', to Cape Forbes beyond 80^, a dis- 

 ■ tance of fort3^-five miles ; of all northern Greenland as one con- 

 tinental glacier, having its many outlets along the fiords and 

 valleys of the coast. 



As to the kinds of ice-fields apart from the bergs : he de- 

 scribes (1) the more solid winter floe, seven feet to as many 

 inches thick, which contains no trace of salt at surface (as shown 

 by testing with nitrate of silver) when but two feet thick; (2) 

 the water-sodden ice, which although supporting a person walk- 

 ing over it, breaks readily when struck, and displays "the verti- 

 cal prisms of its crystalline structure;" (3) a honey-comb or 

 cellular kind, " so soft that you may plunge a boat-hook into it;" 

 (4) a granulated variety, which while " thoroughly permeated 

 by water, is as unyielding as asphalt," and which could be punc- 

 tured with a boat-hook, but would not fracture more than cork. 

 Over the surface of the pack usually rests a mantle of snow, 

 and here and there are pools of water, the haunts of the seal 

 and the diver. The movements of the pack bringing parts 

 against one another, often force up hummocks of huge uplifted 

 masses one lying upon another, and these hummocks are at times 

 clustered in great numbers over an ice field. Not unfrequently 

 the great slabs of ice thus thrown up, and supported only at one 

 end, gradually become flexed by their own weight, showing a 

 yielding or molecular movement even in the solid glassy ice. 

 Dr. Kane observes, "On the 20th of March, while we were im- 

 bedded in the floe with a temperature many degrees below zero, 

 one^of those great convulsions called huvim.ocJcivg had thrown 

 np a table eight feet in thickness by twenty or more in width, and 

 in such a position that it was sustained only at its two extremi- 



* "Night before last, standing on the fast floe, I counted, between the two an- 

 chored bergs that served as framings of the picture, thirty-two icebergs in a well- 

 marshaled group. Standing afterward on the summit of our northern buttress, 1 

 counted two hundred and eighty, the glacier terminating the eastern view. Most of 

 these bergs were ahaye the standard height of two hundred and fifty feet; some 

 exceeded three hundred; few were less than one hundred/'— f^ars^ Cniise, p. 467. 



t First cruise, p. 55, 



