w Jersey but, after
contending with the savages for some time, deemed it best to abandon the
project and to return to their Greenland home. The location at which
they attempted their colony is by no means certain.

[Illustration: Stone igloos on the bleak coast of Greenland]

All this island, a half million square miles in area, except a small
part of the southern coast line and a larger area in the north, is
covered by an immense glacier. And this field of ice, like a huge piece
of plastic wax, is constantly moving from the interior down toward the
sea. As it approaches the ocean it divides into branches which flow down
the numerous fiords and valleys into the sea. As the fronts of the
branch glaciers are pushed out into the water their ends are broken off
by the buoyancy of the water. These glacial-born masses then float away
as icebergs, carrying with them on their southward journeys the rock
waste--moraine detritus it is called--gathered by the parent glaciers.

When these floating leviathans are off the coast of Newfoundland, they
encounter the waters of the Gulf Stream, melt, and scatter their debris
of stony matter over a large area of the ocean bed. This process, having
gone on for thousands of years, has shoaled the ocean in certain parts,
forming the so-called Banks of Newfoundland.

A gelatinous slime filled with minute animal life forms on the bottom of
the ocean in the arctic; the cold currents flowing south carry some of
it along with them, and much of it is lodged on the stony bottoms of
these banks. Fish, especially the cod, are fond of this gelatinous
substance, and throng thither at certain seasons of the year in
countless numbers to feed upon it.

One ignorant of the currents of the ocean might be puzzled at times in
observing that an iceberg floats southward at the same time that pieces
of wood are floating northward, both apparently acted upon by the same
current. This may be explained by recalling that warm water is lighter
than cold and hence is found as the upper layer when a cold and a warm
current are flowing in different directions, one upon the other. It
should be borne in mind that seven-eighths of the floating iceberg is
under water, leaving but one-eighth above the surface. The Gulf Stream
drift spreads out as it travels northward, and, being much shallower
than the arctic currents, carries floating objects northward on the
surface, while the deeper and more powerful arctic currents fo