XI 
FLOATING ICEBERGS 
261 
effect of a severe shock (and such occur here x ) on a body like 
a glacier, already in motion, and traversed by fissures ! I can 
readily believe that the water would be fairly beaten back out 
of the deepest channel, and then returning with an overwhelming 
force, would whirl about huge masses of rock like so much 
chaff. In Eyre’s Sound, in the latitude of Paris, there are 
immense glaciers, and yet the loftiest neighbouring mountain 
is only 6200 feet high. In this Sound, about fifty icebergs were 
seen at one time floating outwards, and one of them must have 
been at least 168 feet in total height. Some of the icebergs 
0 o 
were loaded with blocks of no inconsiderable size, of granite 
46° 40' 
— So' 
47° 00' 
and other rocks, different from the clay-slate of the surrounding 
mountains. The glacier farthest from the Pole, surveyed 
during the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle , is in lat. 46° 
50’, in the Gulf of Penas. It is 15 miles long, and in one 
part 7 broad, and descends to the sea-coast. But even a few 
miles northward of this glacier, in the Laguna de San Rafael, 
some Spanish missionaries 2 encountered “ many icebergs, some 
great, some small, and others middle-sized,” in a narrow arm 
of the sea, on the 22nd of the month corresponding with our 
1 JBulkeley’s and Cummin’s Faithful Narrative of the Loss of the Wager. The 
earthquake happened August 25, 1741. 
2 Agiieros, Desc. Hist, de Chiloe , p. 227. 
