Home › Curiosities Respecting Ice › Magnitude of Icebergs.-The Glaciers

Magnitude of Icebergs.-The Glaciers

colour, and glistening surface of which, form a pleasing variety in prospect, with the magnificence of the encompassing snow-clad mountains, which, as they recede from the eye, seem to rise 'crag above crag,' in endless perspective. "Large pieces may be separated from those icebergs in the summer season, when they are particularly fragile, by their ponderous overhanging masses overcoming the force of cohesion; or otherwise, by the powerful expansion of the water, filling any excavation or deep-seated cavity, when its dimensions are enlarged by freezing, thereby exerting a tremendous force, and bursting the whole asunder. "Pieces thus or otherwise detached, are hurled into the sea with a dreadful crash: if they are received into deep water, they are liable to be drifted off the land, and, under the form of ice-islands, or ice-mountains, they likewise still retain their parent name of icebergs. I much question, however, if all the floating bergs seen in the seas west of Old Greenland, thus derive their origin, their number being so great, and their dimensions so vast."

MAGNITUDE OF ICEBERGS.-" If all the floating islands of ice thus proceed from disruptions of the icebergs generated on the land, how is it that so few are met with in Greenland, and those comparatively so diminutive, whilst Baffin's Bay affords them so plentifully, and of such amazing size? The largest I ever saw in Greenland, was about 1000 yards in circumference, nearly square, of a regular flat surface, twenty feet above the level of the sea; and as it was composed of the most dense kind of ice, it must have been 150 or 160 feet in thickness, and in weight about 2,000,000 of tons. But masses have been repeatedly seen in Davis' Straits, nearly two miles in length, and one-third as broad, whose rugged mountain summits were reared with various spires to the height of more than 100 feet, whilst their base must have reached to the depth of 150 yards beneath the surface of the sea. Others, again, have been observed, possessing an even surface of five or six square miles in area, elevated thirty yards above the sea, and fairly run aground in water of 90 or 100 fathoms in depth; the weight of which must have been upwards of two thousand millions of tons."

THE GLACIERS.-Those vast piles of eternal ice with which it has pleased the Author of nature to crown the immense chasms between the summits of the Alps, are objects more grand, sublime, and terrific, than any others of the phenomena of nature which remain stationary. These tremendous spires and towers, of uncertain and brittle fabric, seem to forbid the attempts of travellers to explore the depth between them, or 3 X even the rocks and rich valleys around them; but courage and perseverance have been attended with commensurate success, and we are enabled by their labours to learn previously concealed wonders, and to reason upon the causes which produced them.

Mr. Bourrit, precentor of the cathedral church at Geneva, mentions, in the relation of his journey to the glaciers of Savoy, the enterprise of Messrs. Windham and Pocock, in 1741, who, inspired by the artless relations of the peasants, descriptive of the sublimity of their country, when they descended with honey and crystals for sale, determined to visit those frightful regions of ice which had received the appellation of Les Montagnes Maudites; or the Accursed Mountains. The gentlemen alluded to took every precaution for securing their safety; but entertaining many well-grounded fears, naturally arising from a first attempt, they did not reach any considerable distance beyond the edge of the ice in the valley of Montanvert, yet their example operated so powerfully as to induce several others to imitate them, and proceed to the boundary whence they returned: at length M. de Saussure had the resolution and courage to penetrate across the ice to the very extremities of the valleys; Mr. Coxe followed soon after: and from their publications every possible information may be obtained, of which the nature of the subject will admit.

The most astonishing phenomenon attending the glaciers, is their near approach to the usual vegetation of summer; for what can be more wonderful than to view wheat ready for the sickle, parched brown by the rays of the sun, and separated only by the intervention of a few feet, from the chilling influence of an endless bed of ice, which seems impenetrable to its rays.

Many systems and theories have been ingeniously suggested, to ascertain the first cause of the glaciers, their maintenance, and whether they increase or diminish in extent; of which, Gruner's, improved and illustrated with actual observations by M. de Saussure, is the most rational and probable, and Mr. Coxe implicitly adopts it. Admitting that a person could be raised sufficiently above the summits of the Alps of Switzerland, Savoy, and Dauphiny, to comprehend the whole at one view, he would observe a vast chaos of mountains and valleys, with several parallel chains, the highest of which are situated in the centre, and the remainder gradually lessening as they retire from it. The central chain he would find to be surmounted by stupendous fragments of rock, towering in rude masses, which bear vast accumulations of snow and ice, where they are not decidedly perpendicular, or do not overhang their bases: on each side he would see the intervening chasms and gulfs, filled with ice, descending thence even