Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. 159 



sented ; since it could not, owing to the trend of the coast of Newfound- 

 land, have entered the Gulf to the westward of the point designated, but 

 on the contrary was likely to have done so farther eastward. Moreover, 

 as it could by no possibility have reached the spot where he fell in with 

 it, without having been driven across the Gulf Stream into the westerly 

 eddy, it was obvious that unless the heave southwestward by the north- 

 easterly wind and swell were admitted, it must have been for a much 

 longer period in the Stream and finally emerged to the southward of it, 

 at a point much farther south and east than he had assumed in his cal- 

 culation of its course. 



That a mass of ice so considerable should remain after so long a 

 sojourn amid the warm waters of the Stream, would not, he observed, 

 appear surprising, when the enormous magnitude of some of the mass- 

 es that have been encountered by voyagers in these seas was taken 

 into account ; together with the fact that they produce by their disso- 

 lution, carry about with them, and occasion to a great distance around 

 them, a very material decrease of temperature, both in the air and 

 ocean, which tended to render the operation a much more gradual one 

 than we might at the first glance imagine. From the record of a jour- 

 nal kept by Francis D. Mason, Esq., in June, 1810, on a passage from 

 New York to Hahfax, N. S., and published in Blunt's American Coast 

 Pilot, edit. 1827, it appears that the water at seven miles from some 

 icebergs, was from 12° to 15° below the average temperature where it 

 was not affected by the presence of such bodies. One of these islands 

 is represented as having been one hundred and fifty feet in height, and 

 a mile in extent. It was easy to conceive of masses like this, resist- 

 ing the action of air and water for a much longer period than would 

 suffice to place the berg, whose course has just been described, so far 

 from the point of its northern entrance into the Gulf Stream. 



The last iceberg of which Mr. C. was prepared to speak from per- 

 sonal observation, was encountered by hina on the 4th of March, 1841, 

 in the Pacific Ocean, during a passage from the Hawaiian islands to 

 Boston. It was of great magnitude. Its height could not have been 

 less than two hundred and eighty or three hundred feet, and its longest 

 diameter two thirds of a mile. The ship sailing at the rate of seven 

 miles an hour, was two hours and three quarters in coming up with it 

 after it was first seen from the deck, when it already loomed up like a 

 large islet. Immediately on its discovery the ship was headed directly 

 for it, till within half a mile of the berg, at which distance it was 

 passed. Without the aid of a glass Mr. C. distinctly saw enormous 

 masses of rock projecting from different parts of this ice mountain, 

 some of them apparently having a surface of at least twenty feet 

 square. The swell, which was very heavy from the westward, washed 



