THE ARCTIC SEAS. 



49 



Most of these swimming glacier-fragments, or icebergs, which are met with 

 by the whaler in the Northern Atlantic, are formed on the mountainous west 

 coast of Greenland by the large glaciers which discharge themselves into the 

 fiords from Smith's Sound to Disco Bay, as here the sea is sufficiently deep to 

 float them away, in spite of the enormous magnitude they frequently attain. 

 As they drift along down Baffin's Bay and Davis's Strait, they not seldom run 



ICEBERGS AGROUND. 



aground on some shallow shore, where, bidding defiance to the short summe' , 

 they frequently remain for many a year. 



Dr. Hayes measured an immense iceberg which had stranded off the little 

 harbor of Tessuissak, to the north of Melville Bay. The square wall which 

 faced toward his base of measurement was 315 feet high, and a fraction over 

 three-quarters of a mile long. Being almost square-sided above the sea, the 

 same shape must have extended beneath it ; and since, by measurements made 

 two days before, Hayes had discovered that fresh-water ice floating in salt wa- 

 ter has above the surface to below it the proportion of one to seven, this crys- 

 tallized mountain must have gone aground in a depth of nearly half a mile. A 



4 



