Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/49

Rh every respect to those of the Arctic Regions. They are formed by much smaller and irregular pieces of ice breaking away from the snouts of glaciers similar to those found in Spitsbergen and other Arctic lands. These are only formed in smaller masses of land like the South Orkneys or those parts of the continent where relatively small individual glaciers run directly from the mountains into the sea, as they do at the northern extremity of Graham Land, at the South Orkneys, and several other places.

The reader should now have a clear conception of what bergs are and how they are formed. He will see that they are a product of the land, and that they are composed entirely of fresh-water ice. They may be likened to great ships, dwarfing the greatest liners and battleships into beggarly insignificance; they sail forth to the open ocean drifted by deeper currents rather than the wind, moving to and fro with the tide; blizzards and stormy seas lashing them, they drive onward with the currents of the sea, checked only by a contrary tide and helped onward by a favourable one; onward they go head to wind and head to sea, it matters little to them! Should some smaller berg be driven against one of these leviathans, it is dashed to pieces against its icy cliffs, only with the sacrifice of a few chips falling off and around its victim; should a