678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"lire expended in arctic exploration, so little is known and so many 

 of the popular ideas are erroneous. 



Most arctic travelers will agree in saying that careful study 

 of all the works on the subject will form but a meager prepa- 

 ration for a prospective explorer. It is a new world ; impressions 

 are so strange and vivid that no fixed plan of description will 

 suffice. 



In the narrow Greenland waters each successive headland, isl- 

 and, or mountain stands as the mark of farthest progress and 

 blasted hopes of brave old-time navigators. Can anything be 

 more pathetic than the quaint log-book of that stanch old sea- 

 man, Captain John Davis, with its account of protracted strug- 

 gles and final disappointment ? He sailed in the time of Raleigh 

 and Blake. Now, but a few miles beyond a black, ram-shaped 

 cape, that he named Sanderson's Hoop, lies the Danish trading- 

 post of Upernavik, and every summer ten powerful steam whal- 

 ers smash through the ice, which at this point turned back his 

 small sailing vessels. For hundreds of years, dating back to the 

 time of Davis and Frobisher, the art of ice navigation has been 

 constantly improving, until now it is a very rare thing for either 

 a Dundee whaler or a St. John sealer to meet with serious disaster 

 while pursuing its legitimate calling. 



With our own Bering Sea whalers the case is different — there 

 are important differences between the ice encountered in Green- 

 land waters and that north of Alaska. A description of the cir- 

 cumstances affecting the formation of the various kinds of berg 

 and floe ice will make this clear. 



The natural form of an iceberg is a regular prism, broken from 

 the face of the glacier as its onward motion forces it down along 

 the bottom of the inclosing fiord, by the buoyant action of the 

 water. Through the tides the upward pressure of the water va- 

 ries constantly, and has much to do with the production of inter- 

 nal strains and fissures, which form planes of cleavage parallel to 

 the face of the glacier ; one of these ultimately marks the bound- 

 ary of the berg, the others are weak spots which may develop 

 afterward. Where glaciers approach the sea at a steep grade, 

 they move more rapidly, are subjected to greater stresses, there is 

 less opportunity for the exhibition of the viscous property of ice 

 at the freezing-point, debdcles occur more frequently, and the 

 bergs are smaller and more irregular. Under such conditions 

 the ice is full of partly cemented cracks and curved fissures, so 

 that in a short time water-markings, ice-scorings and scratches, 

 and the melting of snow-spots, produce the most fantastic and 

 airy shapes. More durable than clouds, they still rival them in 

 variety of design and change of form, as successive beauties are 

 revealed in passing. Apparently free from all the requisitions of 



