364 



Trof. Nordenskibld — Exjjedition to Greenland. 



be one of those magnificent ice-fjords wliicli Eink so admirably 

 describes, and which we, later in the course of our journey, had an 

 opportunity of visiting. The following diagram will illustrate this 

 more clearly. 



1,500 ft. 



Fig. 5. 



Fig. 5. Inland ice abutting on the bottom of an ice-fjord, i.e. a fjord in ■which real icebergs are 

 formed. 



True icebergs are formed only in those glaciers which terminate in 

 the manner indicated in Fig 5 ; though pieces of ice of considerable 

 dimensions may fall from a steep precipice (Fig. 4). These various 

 kinds of glaciers occur not only in Clreenland, but also in other ice- 

 covered polar lands, e.g. in Spitzbergen, though on so much smaller 

 a scale than in Greenland, that one never meets in the surrounding 

 waters with icebergs at all comparable in magnitude with those of 

 Davis Strait. 



In Spitzbergen, and probably also in some parts of Greenland, the 

 ice passes into the sea in the following manner. 



Fig. 6 



Fig. 6. Inland ice abutting on a mud-bank. 



As T have already remarked in the account of the geological 

 relations of Spitzbergen, this last-mentioned kind of termination of 

 inland ice towards the sea is met with only either in those places 

 where the limits of the inland ice rapidly recede, or where the ice 

 breaks for itself a new channel or way to the sea. This is, for 

 example, the case with Axels glacier in Bell Sound, which, when I 

 first visited the spot in 1858, had an edge like that indicated in 



I 



