SCIENTIFIC RESULTS 



77 



•iiii-ent was setting strongly toward the north. This hevg, therefore, 

 1 11(1 the 17 others seen to the southward, could not have drifted there 

 from the northern or western sides of Davis Strait but must have 

 •oiiie from the east coast of Greenland via Cape Farewell. 



We occasionallv read statements such as the following translated 

 from the Deutsche Seewarte Segelhandbuch (1910, p. 296): ''The 

 icf girdle along the west coast of Greenland spreads out north west- 

 ward crossing over Davis Strait and then sets south along the Labra- 

 \(>v coast following the path of the current toward the Newfoundland 

 ]^)anks." Johnston (1915, p. 40) says that many of the icebergs 

 lighted east of Flemish Cap in the North Atlantic are east Greenland 

 bergs carried there by one of the branches of the cold current. In 

 iliscussing the behavior of pack ice it has already been shown that 

 there is little likelihood of any east Greenland ice reaching over to 



The Westernmost limits of East Greenland Icebergs 



Figure 37. — The most westerly positions iu wiiieh i(>el)ergs from tlie 

 glaciers of east Greenland have been sighted around Cape Farewell. 

 The heavy line marks the position of bergs in July, 1922, and the 

 slender liiie. bergs in .Tune, 1917. (From records over a long period 

 kept by the Danish Meteorological Institute.) 



American waters. The main obstacle to such a journey is not so 

 much lack of transportation as inability to survive long enough in 

 the relatively warm off-shore waters. Icebergs being of large bulk 

 and mass are, however, able to withstand the process of melting for 

 I a much longer time than is sea ice and therefore are occasionally 

 'found in places very remote from their sources. Thus the files of the 

 Danish Meteorological Institute show, such as April, 1913. a berg was 

 sighted about 200 miles west-southwest of Ivigtut, Greenland, a 

 ]><)sition about halfway across Davis Strait. Again in June and 

 Jiilv, 1917, bergs were sighted in latitude 59° 30', longitude 51° 00', 

 iui(l latitude 59° 30', longitude 52° 00'. These positions when plotted 

 ' on the dynamic current map. Figure 95, directly coincide with one of 

 the southwestern branches and while the extraordinary long jour- 

 neys accomplished by icebergs in rare instances forbids any positive 



