16 ICEBERG. [CHAP. I. 



the Flemish Cap, lat. 47 35 N. ; long. 44 3.2 W. They 

 feed on fish peculiar to these comparatively shallow parts of the 

 Atlantic. 



But the event of chief interest to me on this voyage AV.-IS be 

 holding, for the first time in my life, a large iceberg. . It came 

 in sight on the 13th Sept., a season when they are rarely met 

 with here. We were nearing the Great Bank, which was about 

 eight miles distant, the air foggy, so that I could only see it 

 dimly through the telescope, although it was as white as snow, 

 and supposed by the officers to be about 200 feet high. The 

 foggy and chilly state of the atmosphere had led the captain to 

 suspect the proximity of floating ice, and half-hourly observations 

 had been made on the temperature of the sea, but the water was 

 always at 49 F., as is usual in this month. We were then in 

 lat. 47 37 N., long. 45 39 W., our latitude corresponding to 

 that of the Loire in France. 



To a geologist, accustomed to seek for the explanation of vari 

 ous phenomena in the British Isles and Northern Europe, espe 

 cially the transportation of huge stones to great distances, and the 

 polishing and grooving of the surfaces of solid rocks, by referring 

 to the agency of icebergs at remote periods, when much of what 

 is now land in the northern hemisphere was still submerged, it is 

 no small gratification to see, for the first time, one of these icy 

 masses floating so far to the southward. I learnt from our cap 

 tain that last year, June 1844, he fell in with an iceberg aground 

 at some distance from the land ofT Cape Race, on the S.E. point 

 of Newfoundland, in lat. 4G 40 N. It was of a square shape, 

 100 feet high, and had stranded in a sea of some depth ; for its 

 sides were steep, and soundings of fifty fathoms were obtained 

 close to the ice. It was seen at the same spot ten days after 

 ward by a brig. A military officer on board also tells me that 

 last year, when he was in garrison in Newfoundland, an iceberg 

 continued aground in the harbor of St. John s for a year, and 

 they used to fire cannon-balls at it from the battery. There are, 

 indeed, innumerable well-authenticated cases of these islands of 

 floating ice having stranded on the* great oceanic shoals S.E. of 

 Newfoundland, even in places where the water is no less than 



