The Hydrographic Bureau at Washington, which is in many ways useful in transatlantic navigation, issues a series of charts of an area of ocean reaching eastward from Newfoundland. There are twelve of them, one for each month of the year, and they differ only in certain pencillings which vary from month to month. Let us examine the set issued for a recent year. In the chart for January five little pyramids are clustered together in the sea, with a sixth to the north of them; in February the pyramidal little figures can be counted by the score, surrounded by zig-zag lines—they look like an encampment; in March the zig-zag lines have disappeared, and the tents, so to speak, are more scattered; in April they are much the same as in March, but in May they have increased enormously and can be counted by the hundred, reaching from the far north to over a hundred miles southward of the Grand Banks. In June they are fewer, and in July fewer still. In August only about twenty are visible; in September not more than ten; in October two, in November one, and in December two. The zig-zag lines disappear earlier than the pyramids; the former represent field-ice, the latter ice-bergs; and thus it is seen that during one year there was not a single month in which the transatlantic route was entirely free from danger from those sources. In 1882 the bergs appeared in February and disappeared in August; February, March, and April are the months for their appearance, and they often linger till October or November. [Illustration: At Close Quarters, Among the Icebergs.]