IX.] 
GLACIER ICE-BLOCKS 
423 
They have seldom a cross section of more than thirty or forty 
metres, and it is only exceptionally that they are more 
than ten metres high above the surface of the water. They 
originate from the “calving” of glaciers which project into 
the sea with a straight and evenly high precipitous border. 
Such glaciers occur in large numbers on the coasts of Spitzbergen^ 
and they are there of the same height as similar evenly-cut 
glaciers on Greenland. According to the statement of the 
Dane Petersen, who took part both in Kane’s expedition in 
1853-55 and in Torell’s in 1861, the glaciers, for instance, at 
Hinloopen Strait in Spitzbergen, are fully equal, with respect 
to their size and the height of their borders above the sea-level, 
to the enormous and much bevvritten Humboldt glacier in Green¬ 
land. In Spitzbergen too we find at two places miniatures of 
the Greenland ice-currents, for instance the glacier which filled 
the Korth Haven in Bell Sound, another glacier which filled 
an old Dutch whaling haven between Recherche Bay and Van 
Keulen Bay, a glacier on the north side of Wahlenberg Bay 
and perhaps at that part of the inland ice marked in my 
map of the expedition of 1872 as a bay on the east coast 
of North-east Land. It is even possible that small icebergs 
may be projected from the last-mentioned place, and thence drift 
out into the sea on the east coast of Spitzbergen. 
Glacier-ice shows a great disposition to fall asunder into 
smaller pieces without any perceptible cause. It is full of cavities, 
containing compressed air, which, when the ice melts, bursts 
its attenuated envelope with a crackling sound like that of the 
electric spark. It thus behaves in this respect in the same 
way as some mineral salts which dissolve in water with slight 
explosions. Barents relates that on the ~th August 1596 he 
anchored his vessel to a block of ice which was aground on the 
coast of Novaya Zemlya. Suddenly, and without any perceptible 
cause, the rock of ice burst asunder into hundreds of smaller 
pieces with a tremendous noise, and to the great terror of all the 
