28i 



GREENLAND OR POLAR ICE, 



exerting a tremendous force, and bursting the 

 whole asunder. 



Pieces thus, or otherwise detached, are hurled 

 into the sea with a dreadful crash ; if they are 

 received into deep water, they are liable to be 

 drifted off the land, and, under the form of ice- 

 islands, or ke-mountains, they likewise still retain 

 their parent name of icebergs. I much question, 

 however, if all the floating bergs seen in the 

 seas west of Old Greenland, thus derive their ori- 

 gin ; their number is so great, and their dimen- 

 sions so immense. 



Magnitude of Icebergs, 



If all the floating islands of ice thus proceed 

 from disruptions of the icebergs generated on 

 the land, How is it that so few are met with in 

 Greenland, and those comparatively so diminu- 

 tive, v;hilst Baffin's Bay affords them so plentiful- 

 ly, and of such amazing size ? The largest I 

 ever saw in Greenland, was about a thousand yards 

 in circumference, nearly square, of a regular flat 

 surface, twenty feet above the level of the sea, 

 and as it was composed of the most dense kind of 

 ice, it must have been 150 or l60 feet in thick- 

 ness, and in weight about tvizo millions of tons. 

 But masses have been repeatedly seen in Davis' 

 Straits, near two miles in length, and one-third as 

 broad, whose rugged mountainous summits were 

 reared with various spires to the height of more 

 than a hundred feet, whilst their base must have 



