CHAPTER XLV. 
\yE continued our progress through a labyrinth of 
ice, sometimes running into a berg, or grazing against 
its edge so close as to carry away a spar or stave a 
quarter-boat, but still making our way across to the 
Greenland shore. The sea was studded with low 
bergs and water- washed floes, wearing the fantastic 
forms which had surprised us the year before. Some 
were both complicated and graceful, supported gener- 
ally by peduncular bases, which gaAm them a curi- 
ous aspect of fra- 
gility. This was 
evidently due to 
the action of the 
waves at the wa- 
ter-line, aided by 
the warmth of the 
atmosphere. Some 
of these forms 1 
have already giA'- 
en at the foot of 
chapters; others I group 
in the margin. 
If we suppose a near- 
ly symmetrical lump ol 
ice, floating with that 
stable equilibrium Avhich 
belongs to its excessiA^e 
submergence, the atmosphere, which has noAv a tern- 
