Dr. Scoresby records the adventure of two sailors who had been sent to attach an anchor to a berg. They set to work to hew a hole in the ice, but scarcely had the first blow been struck, when the colossal mass rent from top to bottom and fell asunder, the two halves falling in opposite directions with a tremendous uproar. One of the sailors, with remarkable presence of mind, instantly clambered up the huge fragment on which he was sitting, and remained rocking to and fro on the dizzy summit until its equilibrium was restored; the other, falling between the masses, would probably have been crushed to death if the current caused by their commotion had not swept him within reach of the boat that was waiting for them. Fastening to a berg, says Sherard Osborn, has its risks and dangers. Sometimes the first stroke of the man setting the ice-anchor, by its concussion, causes the iceberg to break up, and the people so employed run great risk of being injured; at another time, vessels obliged to make fast under the steep side of a berg have been seriously damaged by pieces detaching themselves from overhead; and, again, the projecting masses, called tongues, which form under water the base of the berg, have been known to break off, and strike a vessel so severely as to sink her. All these perils are duly detailed by every Arctic navigator, who is always mindful, in mooring to an iceberg, to look for a side which is low and sloping, without any tongues under water. Captain Parry was once witness of that sublime spectacle, which, though of frequent occurrence, is seldom seen by human eyes, the entire dissolution of an enormous iceberg. Its huge size and massiveness had been specially remarked, and men thought that it might well resist “a century of sun and thaw.” It looked as large as Westminster Abbey. All on board Captain Parry’s ship described as a most wonderful spectacle this iceberg, without any warning, completely breaking up. The sea around it became a seething caldron, from the violent plunging of the masses, as they broke and re-broke in a thousand pieces. The floes, torn up for a distance of two miles around it, by the violent action of the rolling waters, threatened, from the agitation of the ice, to destroy any vessel that had been amongst them; and Captain Parry and his crew congratulated themselves that they were sufficiently far from the scene to witness its sublimity without being involved in its danger. [Illustration: ICEBERG AND ICE-FIELD, MELVILLE BAY, GREENLAND]