THE BERGS MOVING. 465 
must be involved helplessly in floating skreed, adrift, 
and at the mercy of the winds and currents. As our 
protecting floe gives way, therefore, men walk over 
the liberated tables, and plajit our ice-hooks further 
off in the part that remains solid. This process is go- 
ing on without intermission ; so that now (12 o'clock 
M.) we have a hundred yards of cable out ahead and 
astern. We are surrounded by floes, and the channel 
outside is a compacted surface of floating rubbish, 
" As far as the eye can reach, the sea, and, by refrac- 
tion, the air, is studded with bergs, apparently concen- 
tering about our anchorage. Astern of us, stretching 
to the westward, are five, so nearly abreast as to re- 
semble one ragged mountain precipice. There is not 
one of these smaller than our "Washington Capitol; 
and one of them would fill the Capitol square. Di- 
rectly ahead, only a hundred and fifteen yards off, is 
a huge one, black, gnarled, water- worn, and serrated 
with deep chasms ; and streams of melted snow are 
pouring down in noisy cascades along its gullies. This 
berg is fast in the anchoring ice ; but every now and 
then it breaks off in great masses with a report like 
artillery. Between it and the nearest astern of us the 
distance is about three hundred yards. On one side 
we have the equivalent of a rock-bound mountain 
coast : every where else a phalanx of serried bergs, 
" 2 P.M. The bergs are in motion again, and bear- 
ing for us. 
'^August 12, Tuesday. The berg ahead still holds 
its anchorage. It is an amorphous mass, so worn that 
it must have been sorely wrought before its release 
from the glacier. Its summit is a rolling country, 
stained with earth and rocks: you can walk up and 
down hill over it for nearly a mile in a single line. 
Gg 
