J98 RINK ON THE NORTH COAST OF GREENLAND. [April 12, 1858. 
always most desirable, and which formed one of the bases upon which he 
founded his map. He added to that, another mode of calculation called the 
dead-reckoning ; but unhappily, it was an incorrect dead-reckoning, and there 
was the error. Now if he had done what I am certain Professor Bache or 
Lieut. Maury would have done — taken the observation of the latitude of the 
day, and added the difference of latitude of the distance travelled from that 
point correctly — that difference, added to the latitude, would give the precise 
point which should be put down for the extreme to which Morton went. 
That would be the correct latitude. Now, although it may appear to many of 
us, and particularly to those who are not practical geographers, that a few miles 
more or less can make no difference in a great and perilous undertaking of 
this kind — accomplished as it was in such a persevering and gallant manner — 
yet there is one little national point of view in which it is of some importance. 
By making this deduction it would then appear that the British flag was un- 
furled farther north than any other. But, if the correction be omitted, and 
the error be allowed to remain, then the American flag has an unquestionable 
claim to the honour. That, I believe, is the chief point. As regards the glaciers, 
I shall not enter into their theory, because it would occupy too much of our 
time, and Dr. Rink, who is really an authority upon the subject, has passed 
eight or nine years of his life in investigating the laws of glaciers. He tells 
you that, at the elevation of 2000 feet — the level of continual snow — they rise 
in plateaus one above the other ; twenty-three of which plateaus he counted. 
That the ice is forced gradually down in one vast mass, following the sinuosities 
of the valleys to the fiords, and, having a thickness of at least 1000 feet, still 
glides along the uneven bottom until it is acted upon by the water, and, strug- 
gling to rise, is at last liberated by the action of the swell, when vast masses are 
broken off and detached. Those masses form icebergs, and they are known in 
many instances to attain a height of from 150 to 200 feet, and even more ; some- 
times, indeed, they are fully a mile in length. I think there can be no doubt of 
that, as Dr. Rink has seen them with his own eyes. A little incident fell under 
my own observation at Spitzbergen. With my friend Sir John Franklin, and 
in a boat commanded by the late Admiral Beechey, we were going past a glacier 
at the distance of perhaps half a mile with a party of men prepared for a survey ; 
a flight of eider ducks passed by, and one of the officers thoughtlessly fired 
his gun ; the concussion of this acted on the iceberg and brought down a huge 
mass. We looked with some interest at it, but without any alarm, for there 
was a low point of land between us and the iceberg. The mass was sub- 
merged for a short time, but soon rose again, and then sent a wave to the oppo- 
site shore, perhaps a mile and a half distant. The return of that wave struck 
the launch in which we were, lifted her up, and threw her high and dry on the 
beach and upset us. I merely state this to show that there are other reasons 
besides those mentioned by Dr. Rink, for the appearance of small icebergs, 
though doubtless he must have seen many similar effects. The learned Doctor 
says that the ice calved — that it rises from below, which in fact, it generally 
does, but in this instance such was not the case. Again, Dr. Rink speaks 
about the open sea in the vicinity of ice : now that is a very delicate question 
to enter into, and on this occasion I am not prepared to do so ; but I can speak 
of some of the stream-holes, or open spaces of water, which do occasionally 
form in the ice. I may mention an almost ludicrous circumstance that 
occurred when I commanded H.M.S. Terror. Surrounded by ice in the 
frozen straits off Southampton Island, with not a particle of water to be seen, 
and the ship in some danger, in the course of an hour a pool of water opened 
out, perhaps some 30 feet in diameter. Within an hour or an hour and a 
half afterwards, that pool was more or less covered with birds of the gull 
species, and even large narwals came up to breathe there. I may mention 
that it was Sunday afternoon when a sturdy British sailor betook himself to 
