Icebergs occur in many places in the arctic and antarctic regions; some of them of astonishing magnitude. In the Spitzbergen Sea, indeed, they are neither numerous nor bulky, compared with those of other regions; the largest I ever met with in this quarter not exceeding a thousand yards in circumference, and two hundred feet in thickness. But in Hudson’s Strait, Davis’s Strait, and Baffin’s Bay, they occur of a prodigious size. Ellis describes them as sometimes occurring of the thickness of five hundred or six hundred yards. Frobisher saw one iceberg which was judged to be “near fourscore fathoms above water.” One berg is described by captain Ross (the dimensions of which were given in by lieutenant Parry[1]) as having nine unequal sides, as being aground in sixty-one fathoms, and as measuring 4,169 yards (paces) long, 3,689 yards broad, and fifty-one feet high. The weight of this iceberg, taken at somewhat smaller dimensions, was estimated, by an officer of the Alexander, at 1,292,397,673 tons. This amount, however, is greater than the truth, the cubical inch of ice being taken at 240 grains, whereas it does not exceed 231·5 grains. The most abundant source of icebergs known in the arctic regions is Baffin’s Bay. From this remarkable sea they constantly make their way towards the south, down Davis’s Strait, and are scattered abroad in the Atlantic to an amazing extent. The banks of Newfoundland are occasionally crowded with these wonderful productions of the frigid zone; beyond which they are sometimes conveyed, by the operation of the southerly under-current, as low as latitude 40° north, and even lower, a distance of at least two thousand miles from the place of their origin.