I shall now give the general result of an exploration of the iceberg, which occupied me for several days. I use the word _day_ in the ordinary sense, as indicating a period of twenty-four hours; although, during my stay in the arctic region, the daylight was perpetual. This frozen island, which was to be for a time my habitation, extended, so far as I could judge, over an area of about five hundred acres; but there were certain marks about the surface and cleavages on the sides, which indicated that it was originally of much greater size. It was also very evident that it had assumed its form, and been detached from the shore, at some point on the coast many degrees remote from its present position, and had then been driven towards the pole by some extraordinary current into which it had happened to fall. At some former period, this iceberg must have floated, or been stationary, in a region where game abounded and birds were plenty; where vessels sailed, and where vessels were wrecked; and, when it was launched from the shore, it carried off with it not less than an acre of good, rich loam,--the effect, probably, of a land-slide in the vicinity. It will, I think, be seen that it is only upon this general supposition, that we can account for what I found there. I may here observe, before proceeding further, that, while on three sides the walls of the berg rose almost perpendicularly out of the sea, yet on the remaining side there was quite an easy and gradual slope down to the water; and this may also serve to explain how some of the things that I found on the island were thrown or lifted there.