182 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
steeply-sloping valley^ where ice-blocks tumble on each other 
with a crashing noise and din^ and from which true icebergs 
of giant-like dimensions are projected in hundreds and thousands; 
troad, slowly-advancing glaciers, which terminate towards the 
sea with an even perpendicular face, from which now and then 
considerable ice-blocks, but no true icebergs, fall down; and 
smaller stationary glaciers, which advance so slowly that the ice 
in the brim melts away about as fast as the whole mass of ice 
glides forward, and which thus terminate at the beach not with 
a perpendicular face but with a long ice-slope covered with clay, 
sand, and gravel. 
The inland-ice on Novaya Zemlya is of too inconsiderable 
extent to allow of any large icebergs being formed. There are 
none such accordingly in the Kara Sea/ and it is seldom that 
even a large glacier ice-block is to be met with drifting about. 
The name ice-house, conferred on the Kara Sea by a 
famous Kussian man of science, did not originate from the large 
number of icebergs,^ but from the fact that the covering of 
1 Sometimes, however, icebergs are to be met with in the most northerly 
part of the Kara Sea and on the north coast of Novaya Zemlya, whither 
they may drive down from Franz Josef Land or from other yet unknown 
Polar lands lying farther north, 
2 In most of the literary narratives of Polar journeys colossal icebergs 
play a very prominent part in the author’s delineations both with the pencil 
and the pen. The actual fact, however, is that icebergs occur in far 
greater numbers in the seas which are yearly accessible than in those in 
which the advance of the Polar travellers’ vessel is hindered by impene¬ 
trable masses of ice. If we may borrow a term from the geography of 
plants to indicate the distribution of icebergs, they may be said to be more 
horeal thnu polar forms of ice. All the fishers on the coast of Newfound¬ 
land, and most of the captains on the steamers between New York and 
Liverpool, have some time or other seen true icebergs, but to most north¬ 
east voyagers this formation is unknown, though the name iceberg is often 
in their narratives given to glacier ice-blocks of somewhat considerable 
dimensions. This, however, takes place on the same ground and with the 
same justification as that on which the dwellers on the Petchora consider 
Bolschoj-Kamen a very high mountain. But although no true icebergs 
are ever formed at the glaciers so common on Spitzbergen and also on 
