mournful interest occasioned by
the loss of the President steamer which left New York in the year 1841
to cross the Atlantic, but perished in the passage, without leaving a
survivor to tell the story of her fate. It has been deemed highly
probable that this vessel got entangled in the ice, and was destroyed by
collision with its masses; for during that year, in the month of April,
the Great Western steamer encountered a field extending upwards of a
hundred miles in one direction, surrounded with an immense number of
floes and bergs, and had great difficulty in effecting its passage by
this floating continent in safety.

Another form under which the ice appears in the ocean is that of bergs,
which differ from the ice-fields in shape and origin. They are masses
projecting to a great height above the surface of the water, and have
the appearance of chalk or marble cliffs and mountains upon the deep.
They have been seen with an elevation of two hundred feet--a
circumference of two miles: and it has been shown by experiments on the
buoyancy of ice floating in sea water, that the proportion above the
surface is only about one-seventh of the thickness of the whole mass.
During the first expedition of Ross, he found an ice berg in Baffin's
Bay, at a distance of seven leagues from the land, which was measured by
a party under Lieutenant Parry. Considerable difficulty was experienced
in the attempt to land, as, in rowing round the berg, they found it
perpendicular in every place but one. When they had ascended to the
top, which was perfectly flat, they discovered a white bear in quiet
possession of the mass, who plunged into the sea without hesitation, and
effected his escape. The party found the ice berg to be four thousand
one hundred and sixty-nine yards long, three thousand eight hundred and
sixty-nine yards broad, and fifty-one feet high, being aground in
sixty-one fathoms. Its appearance was like that of the back of the Isle
of Wight, and the cliffs resembled those of the chalk range to the west
of Dover. The weight of this mass was calculated to amount to one
billion two hundred and ninety two millions three hundred and ninety
seven thousand six hundred and seventy-three tons.

[Illustration: A WHITE BEAR.]

An ice berg examined by Captain Graah, on the east coast of Greenland,
rose one hundred and twenty feet out of the water, had a circumference
of four thousand feet at the base, and its solid contents were estimated