How Icebergs are Formed.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 434, 4 January 1890, Page 4

How Icebergs are Formed.

The first heats of. the'brief but hot Arctic sunshine set in rapid motion the glaciers of Labrador and Greenland. These vast storehouses of gathered ! and consolidated snow glide to the edge of the tremendous* , precipices of ..the Winter Lands, and, fa.ll-. ing oyer them in monstrous masses, crash into the deep water with shocks which send thunder-peals through the still Polar air, and perturb the ocean far' and near with rolling Waves. Then, committed, by this awful launch to the southward-going currents, the great broken glittering mass goes solemnly sailing away in the unwonted sunshine.. . As it floats, the water, warmer than the air, melts its lower portion gradually, and detached pieces also fall from the visible part, until equilibrium becomes de. stroyed and the colossal block capsizes with a second shock, startling" the ocean for leagues around. Put a vast number of these bergs are flat, and there are, besides, immense fields or floes which carry on their surface, without upsetting, boulders of rock and mud and detritis, scraped up by the cosmic chisels of the ice ; and these, it is believed by many geologists, have borne from the 1 Frozen Circle and deposited on the banks of Newfoundland the vast deposits which created those extensive shallows—the feeding-ground, of fish and the .breeding-place of mists.' 'The loftier bergs dive slowly down inside and outside the Gulf of St. -Lawrence,:"and haunt it with their baleful johantomspf destruction'. Fantastic Skates of Icebergs. U ; Very weird, indeed, it is - to'catch, in tlie - rays of the new- moon;' or in the faint twilight never -'absent from-the rim of the sea, the pallid ghostly glareras dim' as a corpse-light, which draws from the look-out man this sudden cry of‘Tee r on the windward bow.’ The'"* distant aspect is as though, a gleam-of greyish" i:phosphorescence shot,' afar off,' from' the ocean depths, bub very soon fchegauntand 'glittering berg displays : its 1 pinnacles and ledges of snow-clad crystals,--and shows its fantastic shape full to the mariner. The clouds take sucli variety of forms with iwhich to engage the imagination. Sometimes it seems a sea - temple' oi sculptured ice which floats by, f 'allcompletewith dome,! and porch, and archways. Sometimesntis of sthe spirits ofithe Pole had been harvesting their glassy crop of winter.-- Sometimes you, might "swear it was a full-rigged ship frozen to white death, or a fortress of’the -impregnable north, > cut adrift from the Arctic ramparts. But,-met with in: the: darkness, not,' perhaps,perceived until the glare of the ship’s lamps W rOflected'.backi from its stealthy add silent onset, yrhat peril can be more deadly ? -1 ” ; ytHOd • ni . .u01.i:...: Op'/C :