THE CALVING OF ICEBERGS 33 
moving mass portions are broken off as icebergs. 
The face of the Humboldt glacier, the largest of 
these tentacles (Map 4, on the edge of the north- 
west coast, just south of lat. 80° N.), is an ‘abrupt 
and threatening precipice’ 300 ft. high and sixty 
miles in breadth. One of the most prolific berg- 
forming glaciers on the west coast stretches across 
the head of the Jakobshavn Ice-fjord (lat. 69° N.), 
a few miles to the east of the Jakobshavn Settle- 
ment. It has been calculated that the daily dis- 
charge of ice through this ice-fjord amounts to 
432,000,000 cubic feet. The ice discharged annu- 
ally from the Jakobshavn Ice-fjord would, it is 
stated, make a mountain two miles long, two miles 
broad, and a thousand feet high. The surface of 
the water, as seen from the hummocky coast behind 
the Settlement, is a continuous mass of ice; ice- 
bergs, some floating, some stranded, are huddled 
together in disorderly array suggesting the fall of 
a stupendous avalanche into the waters of the fjord 
(Fig. 11). At the western end of the fjord the 
icebergs set out to sea, drifting, it may be, many 
hundred miles before they melt or come to rest on 
the shore of Newfoundland, or even farther south, 
breaking up like ships aground. It may well be 
that some of the icebergs encountered during a 
voyage to the St Lawrence or to New York began 
their journey in the Jakobshavn Fjord. Others 
make shorter voyages and, after drifting across 
Disko Bay or into the Vaigat Strait, end their course 
in home waters. In size the Greenland icebergs 
vary enormously: the highest surpass those in the 
66 8sG. 3 
