Chapter III

The Polar seas--Formation of icebergs--Their dimensions and
appearance--Description of colossal bergs--Their danger to
navigation--Adventures with bergs--Quotations from various
writers--Dissolution of an iceberg--Icebergs in Melville
Bay--How icebergs are formed--Reference to icebergs in the
Alpine lakes--Professor Tyndall quoted--Breaking up of a berg
described by Dr. Hayes--A vision of icebergs--Their range--The
“pack-ice” described--Extent of the ice-fields--“Taking the
pack”--An incident described by Admiral Beechey--Dangerous
position of Captain Parry’s ships--Character of an
ice-field--Crossing an ice-field--Its extraordinary
dimensions--Animal life in the Polar
seas--Walrus-hunting--Quotation from Mr. Lamont--A disagreeable
process--Natural history of the walrus--The walrus and the
Polar bear--Historical sketch of the walrus-fishery--Adventure
with walruses--A walrus-hunt described--Hunting in an Arctic
gale--The Phocidæ family--Natural history of the seal--Different
genera--Seal’s flesh, and its uses--An incident in Dr. Kane’s
expedition--An Eskimo hut--An Eskimo seal-hunter--The whale, and
all about it--The Greenland whale--What is whalebone?--Food of
the whale--The Northern rorqual--Eskimo whale-fishers--About the
narwhal--The black dolphin--The orc, or grampus--The Polar
bear--Bears and seals--Particulars of the habits of the Polar
bear--His voracity--Affection of the bear for her young--An
episode described--Battle with a bear--The bear and the Eskimo
dogs--The Arctic night--Its various phases--Coming of the
sun--Return of the birds--Guillemots and auks--About the
puffins--The mergansers--The smew, or white nun--The eider duck
described--Eider ducks in Iceland--Collecting eider down--The
wild swan--Fables about its death-song--The Arctic waters, and
their teeming life--Migrations of fish 41–107

CHAPTER IV.

The formation of snow described--Snow-crystals--Effects of the
crystallizing force--Ice-flowers--Sir David Brewster’s
experiment with polarised light--Regelation and moulding of
ice--Characteristics of glacier-ice--Cleavage in compact
ice--The aspect of glaciers--On the motion of glaciers--History
of its discovery--Moraines described--Theory of
glacier-motion--Quotation from Professor Tyndall--Glaciers of
the Polar Regions--Glacier in Bell Sound--Formation of
icebergs--Icebergs in Baffin Bay--Glacier described by Dr.
Hayes--The Greenland Mer de Glace--Glacier of
Sermiatsialik--The great Humboldt Glacier--Discovered by Dr.
Kane--Description of its features--Kane’s theory of
icebergs--Notes on the glacier 108–134