406 J. Milne — Ice and Ice-work in Newfoundland. 



wind and tide a continnal chafing action is going on.^ If the pack- 

 ice can float up and down along the foot of a cliff, or in deep water 

 near rocks, the consequences are the formation of horizontal grooves 

 and scratches, and these in cases are carried to such an extent that 

 the cliff may be undercut. The "balacada," in a position of this 

 sort, is formed by the spray, and projects out a foot or two from the 

 face of the cliff ; the drain, with its floating-ice, being beneath. 



In addition to the work done in scratching and grooving by the 

 coast-ice, it also does much in the transportation of material. When 

 in deep water, chafing along the face of a cliff, by its own horizontal 

 and vertical movements, together with its continued force of impact 

 on a heaving swell, it must detach a considerable amount of material. 

 This, together with that which may fall upon its edge from the 

 rocks above (which appear to be universally greater at the breaking 

 up of a frost than at any other season of the year), is carried by the 

 coast-ice to a new home. The chief agent, however, in the transpor- 

 tation of material is the "balacada," barrier-ice or ice-foot, attached 

 to the shore. At low water this freezes to the ground on a shelving 

 shore, and is at once firmly attached to both boulders and stones. 

 "When the tide rises, this ice, with its cargo, floats, and may be carried 

 away. The difference in level between neap- and spring- tides is 

 another cause which greatly accelerates the transporting power of 

 the " balacada." A land breeze assists in the dragging off of por- 

 tions that are only partially aground. These, with other causes, 

 are always, during the winter season, more or less in operation in 

 removing materials from one point to another.^ 



This immense transportive power of the coast-ice often occasions 

 severe losses to the fishing population of Newfoundland and 

 Labrador. Various articles, to remove which would involve con- 

 siderable difficulty, such as anchors and cables, having been left 

 upon the beach, have been carried off by the ice ; — it has come 

 along, and after, so to say, glueing itself to everything upon the 

 the shore, has floated off with all to which it was attached. At 

 three harbours, Tilt Cave, Englee, and Goose Cove, I heard lamen- 

 tations over losses of this description ; and no doubt, upon inquiry, 

 similar cases might be recorded of every fishing settlement both 

 in Labrador and Newfoundland. The fishermen seem to have 

 transferred the name "Anchor Ice," from its original idea of ice 

 which anchors itself to the bottom, to ice of this description which 

 endangers the equipment of their vessels. Without actually freezing 

 beneath the surface of the water, as in some of the shallower parts 

 of the Baltic where ground-ice is formed, a species of anchor-ice is 



^ The grating against vertical cliffs is referred to in De la Beclie's " Geological 

 Observer," p. 280, and at p. 282 on coast-ice generally. 



2 Speaking of the Greenland Ice-Foot, Geikie, in his '* Great Ice Age," p. 68, 

 says that " during summer vast piles of rock and rubbish crowd the surface of the 

 ice-foot." " To such an extent does this rock-rubbish accumulate that the whole 

 surface of the shelf is sometimes buried beneath it, and entirely hidden from view." 

 " Along the part of the coast of Greenland where the ice-foot is shed at the end of 

 every summer, the quantities of rock debris thus borne seawards must be something 

 prodigious." 



