1870.] BROWN-—PHYSICS OF ARCTIC ICE. 685 
hours the bay would be clear, until another crop sprang out from 
the fjord. At any time it would be dangerous to venture near these 
bergs; and the poor Greenlander often loses his life in the attempt, 
as the bergs, even when aground, have always a slight motion, 
which has the effect of stirring up the food on which the seals sub- 
sist. Accordingly the neighbourhood of these bergs is favourable 
for seals, in the attempt to capture which the hapless kayaker not 
unfrequently loses his life by falling ice. When we would row 
between two to avoid a few hundred yards’ circuit, the rower would 
pull with muffled oars and bated breath. Orders would be given in 
whispers, and even were Sabine’s gull or the great auk to swim 
past, I scarcely think that even the chance of gaining such a prize 
would tempt us to run the risk of firing, and thereby endangering 
our lives by the reverberations bringing down pieces of crumbling 
ice hanging overhead. A few strokes, and we are out of danger ; 
and then the pent-up feelings of our stolid fur-clad oarsmen find 
vent in lusty huzzahs! Yet, when viewed out of danger, this noble 
assemblage of ice palaces, hundreds in number being seen at such 
times from the end of Jakobshavn Kirke, was a magnificent sight ; 
and the voyager might well indulge in some poetic frenzy at the 
view. The noonday heat had melted their sides; and the rays of 
the red evening sun glancing askance among them would conjure up 
fairy visions of castles of silver and cathedrals of gold. Here was the 
Valhalla of the sturdy Vikings, here the city of the sun-god Freya, 
Alfheim, with its elfin caves, and Glitner, with its walls of gold and 
roofs of silver, and Gmile more brilliant than the sun—the home of 
the happy; and there, piercing the clouds, was Himenberg, the 
celestial mount, where the bridge of the gods touches heaven ?. 
Suddenly there is a swaying, a moving of the water, and our fairy 
palace falls in pieces, or, with an echo like a prolonged thunder-clap, 
it capsizes, sending the waves in breakers up to our very feet. 
It is most probable that the cause of this ‘shooting out” of 
bergs from the ice-fjord of Jakobshayn is due to the force gene- 
rated by the detachment of a fresh berg from the glacier at the 
extremity of the fjord. Occasionally, at the time of this “ shooting 
out,” the waters of Jakobshayn harbour (a little fjord, the locality 
of a now extinct glacier) will rise and fall with such tremendous 
force as to snap a ship’s cable. Actually the cable of the ‘ Mari- 
anne,’ a brig of 200 tons, was so broken in 1866. ‘This wave is 
well known to the Greenland Danes under the name of the “ kaa- 
neel.” Various theories are afloat about it and its cause, which is 
not very well known; but, as it only happens when the ice is 
‘‘ shooting out ” in great quantities, it is most likely caused by the 
displacement of the volume of water confined in the inlet; and 
this wave is also felt outside; but its force is lost in the open 
sea. It is also exhibited at Omenak and other harbours when the 
ice is shooting out of the ice-fjords in their vicinities; but these 
harbours being situated at a greater distance from the scene of 
action, it is not so much felt as at Jakobshayn, close to the ice- 
1 Hayes, op.c. p. 24. 
