422 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
rested on a hard ice-foot projecting deep under water and 
treacherous for the navigator. 
The ice of the Polar Sea may be divided into the following 
varieties :— 
1. Icebergs. The true icebergs have a height above the 
surface of the water rising to 100 metres. They often ground 
in a depth of 200 to 300 metres, and have thus sometimes 
a cross section of up to 400, perhaps 500 metres. Their area 
may amount to several square kilometres. Such enormous 
blocks of ice are projected into the North Polar Sea only from 
the glaciers of Greenland, and according to Payer’s statement, 
from those of Franz-Josef Land also; but not, as some authors 
(Geikie, Brown, and others) appear to assume and have shown 
by incorrect ideal drawings, from glaciers which project into the 
sea and there terminate with a perpendicular evenly-cut border, 
but from very uneven glaciers which always enter the sea in the 
bottoms of deep fjords, and are split up into icebergs long before 
they reach it. It is desirable that those who write on the 
origin of icebergs, should take into consideration the fact that 
icebergs are only formed at places where a violent motion takes 
place in the mass of the ice, which again within a comparatively 
short time results in the excavation of the deep ice-fjord. The 
largest iceberg, which, so far as I know, has been measured in 
that part of the Polar Sea which lies between Spitzbergen and 
Wrangel Land, is one which Barents saw at Cape Nassau 
on the ’|th August 1596. It was sixteen fathoms high, and had 
grounded in a depth of thirty-six fathoms. In the South Polar 
Sea icebergs occur in great numbers and of enormous size. If 
we may assume that they have an origin similar to those 
of Greenland, it is probable that round the South Pole there 
is an extensive continent indented by deep fjords. 
2. Glacier Ice-blochs. These, which indeed have often been 
called icebergs, are distinguished from true icebergs not only 
by their size, but also by the way in which they are formed. 
