closely it may be looked at. You
might go to one of the valleys of Greenland and gaze at a glacier for
days together, but you would see no motion whatever. All would appear
solid, frozen up, and still. But notice a block of stone lying on the
surface of the glacier, and go back many months after and you will find
the stone lying a little further down the valley than when you first saw
it. Thus glaciers are formed and thus they slowly move. But what has
all this to do with ice-bergs? We shall see.

As the great glaciers of the north, then, are continually moving down
the valleys, of course their ends are pushed into the sea. These ends,
or tongues, are often hundreds of feet thick. In some places they
present a clear glittering wall to the sea of several hundreds of feet
in height, with perhaps as much again lost to view down in the deep
water. As the extremities of these tongues are shoved farther and
farther out they chip off and float away. _These chips are ice-bergs_!
I have already said that ice-bergs are sometimes miles in extent--like
islands; that they sink seven or eight hundred feet below the surface,
while their tops rise more than a hundred feet above it--like mountains.
If these, then, are the "chips" of the Greenland glaciers, what must
the "old blocks" be?

Many a long and animated discussion the sailors had that winter in the
cabin of the _Hope_ on the subject of ice and ice-bergs!

When the dark nights drew on, little or nothing could be done outside by
our voyagers, and when the ice everywhere closed up, all the animals
forsook them except polar bears, so that they ran short of fresh
provisions. As months of dreary darkness passed away, the scurvy, that
terrible disease, began to show itself among the men, their bodies
became less able to withstand the cold, and it was difficult for them at
last to keep up their spirits. But they fought against their troubles
bravely.

Captain Harvey knew well that when a man's spirits go he is not worth
much. He therefore did his utmost to cheer and enliven those around
him.

One day, for instance, he went on deck to breathe a mouthful of fresh
air. It was about eleven in the forenoon, and the moon was shining
brightly in the clear sky. The stars, too, and the aurora borealis,
helped to make up for the total absence of the sun. The cold air cut
like a knife against his face when he issued from the hatchway, and the
cold nose of one of the dogs im