ns will,
we trust, make our meaning abundantly clear.

Icebergs are found floating in great numbers in the arctic seas. They
drift southward each spring with the general body of polar ice, and
frequently travel pretty far south in the Atlantic before the heat of
the water and atmosphere united accomplishes their dissolution. They
sometimes travel as far south as Florida with the southerly current that
flows along that coast; but the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, together
with its northerly flow, form an impassable barrier between these
ice-mountains and Europe.

Icebergs assume every variety of form, and almost every size. They
sometimes resemble castles, sometimes churches with glittering spires,
and sometimes the peaked and jagged mountains of Norway. They are also
frequently seen in the form of immense misshapen and top-heavy masses.

In size they vary from one hundred to seven or eight hundred feet in
height. One iceberg, seen by Ross in Baffin's Bay, was above two miles
in length, nearly the same in width, and fifty feet high. But in
stating this, we have not given the reader any idea of its vast
proportions; for it is well known that all icebergs, or masses of ice,
have a much greater proportion of their bulk under than above water--in
other words, they sink very deep. The relative proportion that sinks
depends on the nature of the ice. Of some kinds, there is usually ten
times as much below as there is above water; of other kinds, there may
be eight or five parts below. In all cases there is much more below
than above so that a mountain of a hundred feet high--if afloat--may be
safely calculated to be a mass of ice not far short of a thousand feet
thick.

As these bergs float southward with the currents, they melt very
rapidly. The heat of the sun and the action of the waves gradually
round off the sharp angles and topple down the spires that characterised
them in the land of their birth. The process of dissolution, too, is
carried on internally; for rain and melted water on the surface
percolates through the mass, rendering it porous. As the waves cut away
the base, the centre of gravity is thrown out, and the whole berg turns
over with a terrible crash. Sometimes loud reports like cannon-shots
are heard, and the huge mountain splits asunder; while, not
unfrequently, the whole berg falls into a heap of chaotic ruins, and
floats away in a mass of smaller pieces which disappear gradually in
the