The greater part of the icebergs that occur in Davis’s Strait, and on the eastern coast of North America, notwithstanding their profusion and immense magnitude, seem to be merely fragments of the land icebergs, or glaciers, which exist in great numbers on the coast forming the boundaries of Baffin’s Bay. These glaciers fill immense valleys, and extend, in some places, several miles into the sea; in others, they terminate with a precipitous edge at the general line formed by the coast. In the summer season, when they are particularly fragile, the force of cohesion is often overcome by the weight of the prodigious masses that overhang the sea; and, in winter, the same effect may be produced by the powerful expansion of the water filling any excavation, or deep-seated cavity, when its dimensions are enlarged by freezing, thereby exerting a tremendous force, and bursting the berg asunder. Pieces thus, or otherwise, detached, are hurled into the sea with a dreadful crash. When they fall into sufficiently deep water, they are liable to be drifted off the land, and down Davis’s Strait, according to the set of the current; but, if they fall into a shallow sea, they must remain until sufficiently wasted to float away. Spitzbergen is possessed of every character which is supposed to be necessary for the formation of the largest icebergs; high mountains, deep extensive valleys, intense frost, occasional thaws, and great falls of sleet and snow; yet here a berg is rarely met with, and the largest that occur are not to be compared with the productions of Baffin’s Bay. The reason of the difference between Spitzbergen and Old Greenland as to the production of icebergs is, perhaps, this—that, while the sea is generally deep, and the coast almost continually sheltered by drift-ice at the foot of the glaciers, in Baffin’s Bay; in Spitzbergen, on the contrary, they usually terminate at the water’s edge, or where the sea is shallow, so that no very large mass, if dislodged, can float away, and they are, at the same time, so much exposed to heavy swells, as to occasion dismemberments too frequently to admit of their attaining considerable magnitude.