k off and fall into the water. They are far more
beautiful than the finest of the glaciers of Switzerland, and in size
they are so great that the largest Alpine glacier would make only a
fair-sized nose, if it could be taken bodily and placed upon the face of
one of the Alaskan giants.

At Glacier Bay icebergs are being born all the while. Muir Glacier, the
largest that dips into the bay, presents a front of 5000 feet. It is 700
feet thick, five-sevenths of it being under water. It extends back for
miles and miles.

Each day the central part moves 70 feet into the sea, the discharge
every twenty-four hours being 140,000,000 cubic feet of clear ice. As
this great quantity cracks into pieces from the glacier, the bergs of
the North Pacific begin their life. The separation from the larger mass
and the plunge into the sea cause terrific noises.

The interior of Greenland is a solid mass of ice. In fact, some people
think that at about the central part of Greenland there is a high
mountain, around whose sides there has grown through the centuries an
enormous glacier, sending down in every direction branch glaciers that
extend to the coast. It is known that the only part of the land which is
not covered completely by ice is a narrow belt around the shore.

Crossing this belt at hundreds of places are the glaciers. Some are only
a few hundred feet wide and 50 feet thick, while others are several
miles wide and measure 1500 feet from surface to bottom.

All of these ice streams are making their way to the sea, and as their
ends are forced out into the water by the pressure behind, they are
broken off and set adrift as bergs.

Ensign Hugh Rodman, of the United States navy, in his report on the
"ice and ice movements in the North Atlantic Ocean," explains many
interesting things about ice and bergs.

Once the glacier extends into deep water, pieces are broken off by their
buoyancy, aided possibly by the currents and the brittleness of the ice.

The size of the pieces set adrift varies greatly, but a berg from 60 to
100 feet to the top of its walls, whose spires or pinnacles may reach
from 200 to 250 feet in height and from 300 to 500 yards in length, is
considered an average size berg in the Arctic. These measurements apply
to the part above the water, which is about one-eighth or one-ninth of
the whole mass.

Many authors give the depth under water as being from eight to nine
times the height above. This is incorrect,