34 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
Antarctic seas. Members of a German scientific 
expedition to the west coast measured a monster 
berg that was over four hundred feet above the 
water, but the highest usually seen probably do 
not exceed two hundred feet. The portion seen 
above water when an iceberg is floating is about 
one-eighth of the whole vertical thickness of the 
mass. Mr R. E. Priestley tells me that, on the 
average, Antarctic icebergs, which have more air 
included in the ice than Arctic bergs, and are 
therefore lighter, have about one-sixth of their 
mass above water-level. 
The glittering berg, the mariner’s foe, 
Rears pinnacled peak on high, 
But few are there know how far below 
That isle of emerald ice and snow 
Its dark foundations lie. 
It is a fairly common experience to see a large 
berg of more or less rectangular form penetrated 
by a tunnel, like a massive arch that is gradually 
broadened by the action of the sea and sun at the 
expense of the sides and roof, until the whole breaks 
into two or, by the destruction of the crown of the 
arch, two pinnacled bergs are produced. It has 
been suggested by a Swiss writer, Prof. Mercanton, 
that many of the innumerable forms assumed by 
floating icebergs are derived from tabular blocks 
through which water has driven a tunnel. Such 
observations as I was able to make lend support 
to this hypothesis. 
The sketches of icebergs stranded in Disko Bay 
opposite the Danish Arctic Station, reproduced in 
