We have alluded to the colossal bergs of Baffin Bay. These are thrown off from the northern glaciers, and particularly from the enormous ice-river named after Humboldt, which cumbers the declivities of the Greenland Alps, beyond the 79th parallel. It has been a frequent source of surprise to navigators that these mighty masses should float in a contrary direction to that of the ice-fields which descend with the Polar current towards the Atlantic. They reascend with such rapidity that they shatter the so-called “ice-foot,” or belt of ice, still adhering to the shore. Captain Maury has collected numerous observations on this important subject, and he quotes the case of a ship which was being laboriously hauled against the current, when an enormous floating mountain coming up from the south steered against it, but fortunately did not come into collision with it, and forging ahead, very quickly disappeared. How is such an incident to be explained? By the existence of a submarine counter-current, acting on the lower extremity of the submerged portion of the berg, which, as we have stated, is always seven or eight times larger than the bulk _above_ the surface of the waves. Our whalers, in their hazardous expeditions, often derive assistance from these moving islands. They seek shelter under their lee when sudden storms arise; for the huge bergs are scarcely affected by the most violent gales. They find their shelter valuable also during certain operations of the fishery for which rest and quiet are necessary. Yet it is not absolutely exempt from danger. The seeming friend may prove to be a concealed foe. The iceberg may collapse, or be capsized; or formidable fragments, loosened from their sides or summits, may topple headlong and threaten to overwhelm the ship beneath: but as on these and other accidents we have already dwelt at length, we refrain from wearying our readers with a twice-told tale. The repetition in which, to some extent, we have indulged, was needful, in order to show the reader in what way the dissolution of the lower extremity of the glaciers is effected in the Arctic world. * * * * * In the neighbourhood of Cape Alexander, one of the headlands of Smith Strait, Dr. Hayes met with a glacier, of which he gives an interesting description in his narrative of an “Arctic Boat Journey,” (1854):--