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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
Coast Ice of Newfoundland.—Icebergs have an advantage over coast-ice in their imposing appearance, which has perhaps been in part instrumental in raising them to the high position which they now occupy as workers of Geological changes. Many Manuals of Geology, and many diagrams drawn to illustrate the same science, have oft-times portrayed a well-known flat-topped berg, carrying a rock, in the Antarctic regions; but neither books nor lecture-diagrams, taken collectively, give any adequate idea of coast-ice as a similar agent. From what I have seen of coast-ice and of its effects. I feel persuaded that it is an agent of at least as great, if not of greater universality than either glaciers or icebergs, and taken as a whole perhaps also as an agent of equal power. Of the various forms of sea-ice known as “berg-ice,” “floe-ice,” “pack-ice,” and the like, the portion I would more particularly draw attention to is that variety which forms a narrow belt along the shore, known in Greenland as the “Ice-Foot.”
page 405 note 1 In the selection of Arctic papers for the Arctic Expedition of 1875, published by the Royal and Royal Geographical Societies, p. 49, Robert Brown speaks of sheet-ice and boulders during storms being driven and packed to a height of 50 feet.Google Scholar
page 406 note 1 The grating against vertical cliffs is referred to in De la Beche's “Geological Observer,” p. 280, and at p. 282 on coast-ice generally.
page 406 note 2 Speaking of the Greenland Ice-Foot, Geikie, in his “Great Ice Age,” p. 68, says that “during summer vast piles of rock and rubbish crowd the surface of the ice-foot.” “To such an extent does this rock-rubbish accumulate that the whole surface of the shelf is sometimes buried beneath it, and entirely hidden from view.” “Along the part of the coast of Greenland where the ice-foot is shed at the end of every summer, the quantities of rock débris thus borne seawards must be something prodigious.”
page 408 note 1 Although it may be said that glaciers are not alone confined to Arctic regions, but are also to be seen in the highlands of more temperate climates, it must not be forgotten the distance south that coast-ice is found along shores like those of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Siberia, where glaciers are unknown.
page 408 note 2 “Owing to the inland valleys (of Greenland) being filled up and levelled to the tops of the hills, there is well-nigh a total absence of those long trains of débris that thunder down the steeps of the Alpine Mountains, and gather in heaps along the sides of the glaciers.”—Geikie, “The Great Ice Age,” p. 62. Dr. Rink, however, saw moraines above Upernivik.
page 408 note 3 It might be argued that the bergs carry a burden of rocks and débris frozen to their bases; but in Geikie's “Great Ice Age,” p. 61, we read:—“A few stones may occasionally remain frozen into the bottom of the detached iceberg, but it is evident that the greater portion of the sub-glacial deposit must remain at the bottom of the sea,” and at p. 71 we read: “By far the larger number of Arctic icebergs therefore contain no extraneous matter, and melt away in mid-ocean without leaving behind them any record of their voyage.” However it would be unfair not to quote from the observations of Robert Brown (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1870, p. 687), who states that on ascending an iceberg he “almost invariably found moraine which had sunk by the melting of the ice into hollows, deep out of sight of the voyager sailing past.”
