"The water into which it plunged was converted into an appearance of vapour or smoke, like that from a furious cannonading. The noise was equal to that of thunder, which it nearly resembled. The column which fell was nearly square, and in magnitude resembled a church. It broke into thousands of pieces. This circumstance was a happy caution, for we might inadvertently have gone to the very base of the icy cliff from whence masses of considerable magnitude were continually breaking!" Now, this incident suggests the probability, that, had the face of the glacier projected into deep water, the mass which broke off might have fallen into the sea without being broken to pieces, and might have floated away as a berg. We confess, however, to be partial to the view expressed by some writers, that the great glaciers continue year by year to thrust their thick tongues out to sea, until the projecting masses reach water sufficiently deep to float them, when they are quietly cracked off from their parent and carried away without any fall or plunge. The following remarks by Dr Kane will make this more clear. Writing of the iceberg, he says: "So far from falling into the sea, broken by its weight from the parent glacier, it rises from the sea. The process is at once gradual and comparatively quiet. The idea of icebergs being discharged, so universal among systematic writers, and so recently admitted by myself, seems to me at variance with the regulated and progressive action of nature. Developed by such a process, the thousands of bergs which throng these seas should keep the air and water in perpetual commotion-- one fearful succession of explosive detonations and propagated waves. But it is only the lesser masses falling into deep waters which could justify the popular opinion. The enormous masses of the Great Glacier [of Greenland] are propelled step by step, and year by year, until, reaching water capable of supporting them, they are floated off, to be lost in the temperatures of other regions... "The height of the ice-wall at the nearest point was about three hundred feet, measured from the water's edge; and the unbroken right line of its diminishing perspective showed that this might be regarded as its constant measurement. It seemed, in fact, a great icy table-land, abutting with a clean precipice against the sea. This is, indeed, characteristic of all those arctic glaciers which issue from central reservoirs, or _mers de glace_, upon the fords or bays, and is strikingly in contrast with the dependent or hanging glacier of the ravines."