ARCTIC ICE AND ITS NAVIGATION. 679 



equilibrium, owing to the preponderance of the part submerged, 

 bold spurs and flying arches spring from their walls, and hanging 

 balconies ornament their crests. 



In Greenland, as in the antarctic, there is either a great con- 

 tinent or a congeries of islands, covered with an ice-field of such 

 gradual inclination through great distance that the movement of 

 its face is very slow, and the debdcles and avalanches occur less 

 frequently, so that the bergs are of enormous size .md regular 

 shape, having a height of from one to two hundred feet in the 

 northern and three hundred feet in the southern hemisphere. 

 The Alaskan glaciers are of comparatively small extent, the ice- 

 field of which the Muir and Davidson glaciers are spurs being 

 only four hundred miles wide ; owing to the inclination of their 

 containing valleys, they move with great rapidity, debdcles are 

 occurring continually; the bergs, falling into shallow water, 

 quickly go to pieces, and the fragments which at last escape 

 through the intricacies of fiords and archipelagoes are very small. 

 In addition, the comparatively shallow water along the coast of 

 Siberia prevents floe-bergs of any great size passing through 

 Bering Strait, while a seventeen-fathom bank, north of Wran- 

 gell Island, bars the way to all rectangular bergs over twenty- 

 three fathoms thick that have drifted across the arctic. In this 

 way it happens that the Bering Sea whalers never see the great 

 icebergs which play so important a part in the navigation of 

 those in Greenland waters. 



Perhaps the continual excitement in the confined waters of the 

 latter land, and the natural desire to classify the new and myste- 

 rious with the old and commonplace, make the mind quick to 

 see resemblances. However that may be, the bergs seem subject 

 to some laws of form. Capitals, sphinxes, castles, and cathedrals 

 are frequently met with ; at times, whole menageries would troop 

 past — lions couchant, mushrooms, and flowers occur in profu- 

 sion — the small fragments of ice, through the washing of water 

 and scoring of surrounding floes, showing a greater variety of 

 forms than the large bergs. 



On the east side of Melville Bay in north Greenland is a head- 

 land called, from its peculiar shape, " The Devil's Thumb." It is a 

 remarkable column, resembling a closed hand with the thumb pro- 

 jecting upward, and bears stout testimony to the toughness of the 

 granite composing it, which has withstood in this sharp outline 

 all the disintegrating forces of that climate for centuries. It is 

 about seven hundred feet high. In June, 1884, a photograph was 

 taken of a very lofty iceberg, grounded in its vicinity, which was 

 an almost perfect representation of a hand and wrist, the index- 

 finger pointing heavenward. A connection between the black, 

 time-stained Devil's Thumb and this beautiful marble-like shaft 



