71 



sharpW in twain. The face of the cleavage was as flat as if had been 

 carefully planed to such a surface. Naturally, this increased tremen- 

 dously the rate of disintegration. The temperture of the water and 

 the state of the sea and weather remained quite the same (see p. 36) 

 for the next five days as that recorded on June 4. At 6 p. m. June 5^ 



24 hours after the disruption described above, the growler formed 

 by the tower sliding into the sea, had entirely disappeared because 

 of melting. The two small bergs formed June 4 were by the 5th a 

 small berg and a grow^ler in size. At 4 a. m. June 6, latitude 40° 56', 

 longitude 48° 33', only 10 hours later, every bit of ice had melted. If 

 we had not actually observed this with careful note, we would have 

 been quite skeptical, I am sure. Such an enormous mass of ice such 

 as we measured on June 4 completely disappearing is hard to reconcile 

 with such an extraordinary survival as recorded of a piece of ice June 



25 sighted in latitude 30° 20' north, longitude 62° 32' west (see U. S. 

 Hydrographic Office Weekl}^ Bulletin for December 8, 1926.) 



The ice regions north of the temperature wall on June 4, which 

 had enjoyed clear weather since May 28, were blanketed in fog which 

 prevailed over these waters until June 13, a period of eight days. 

 After remaining near bergs A and B (see fig. 19) until they had com- 

 pletely melted, the natural procedure was to scout and get in touch 

 with other bergs of the group of 26 seen south of the Tail, May 

 22 and 23. These bergs, being in the colder waters north of the 

 temperature wall, was thought to be in various, but less menacing 

 positions in this region. We attempted scouting but were rebuffed 

 by the fog pall from June 6 to 13. When we did search these waters 

 (the 14th to 17th instant) northward along the east side of the Bank 

 to the forty-fifth parallel no ice was to be found. Passing steamers 

 located a group of three bergs west-southwest of the Tail which from 

 several consecutive reports indicated they were drifting northwest 

 in a branch of the inshore current, up on to the southwest slope of 

 the Bank. A small piece of ice was reported on the 12th and again 

 on the 19 th, not far offshore southwest of the Tail in the dead water, 

 and another berg was seen on the tip of the Tail on the 13 th and far- 

 ther northwest on the Bank on the 17th. This was the last report of 

 ice in the region of the Tail for June, so one can appreciate with 

 w^hat suddenness the relativel}^ large group of bergs in positions 

 south of the Tail disappeared from these waters during this month. 



Bergs on the northern part of the Bank, on the contrary, continued 

 to be reported with little abatement during the entire month. There 

 were many reports which referred to the same bergs, this fact being 

 quite apparent to anyone charged with keeping a careful check on 

 the total number of bergs. The tendency of drift of these bergs 

 was quite in accordance with what has been observed in previous 

 years, namely, to ground and drag along the bottom and break up 



