ICEBERGS. 
59 
The mass thus detached appeared, from the descrip- 
tion' of my informant, to be a nearly complete parallel- 
opipedon. It measured, by rude estimate, three hund- 
red yards on its exposed face, by about one hundred 
and fifty in breadth ; its height above the sea " greater 
than that of our main-mast." 
The leading circumstances of this narrative were 
confirmed in our own after experience in Melville Bay. 
Disruptions are witnessed not unfrequently in icebergs 
after they are afloat, and sometimes on a majestic 
scale. Instances of the debacle are more rare. 
July 2. The next day we passed this fiord and 
stood on our course beyond an imposing headland, 
known on the charts as Cape Cranstown, through a 
sea unobstructed by floe ice, but abounding in bergs. 
In the afternoon the wind subsided into a mere 
cat's-paw, and we were enabled to visit several of the 
icebergs. I am amused with the embarrassments 
which my journal exhibits in the effort to describe 
them. Certain it is that no objects ever impressed 
me more. There was something about them so slum- 
berous and so pure, so massive yet so evanescent, so 
majestic in their cheerless beauty, without, after all, 
any of the salient points which give character to de- 
scription, that they almost seemed to me the mate- 
rial for a dream, rather than things to be definitely 
painted in words. 
