The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1890-09-03
HOW ICEBERGS ARE MADE,
THE GIANT OFFSPRING OF RIVERS
q OF SOLID WATER,
Glaciers of Greenland and Alaska
and Their Annual Output ofMill
ions of Tons of Ice Into the Sea

steamer, passengers see an iceberg sweep
ing by in splendid loneliness. Looked
at from afar it seems huge curiously
shaped ship with great white hull and
great white sails all set and blown full
with the breeze. But the strongest glass
detects no flag floating from its frozen
peaks and sees no crew moving upon its
glistening decks. It is an enormous,
clumsy craft which no passing Captain
halls; it is one of the rovers in nature +;
pirate navy which every skipper avoids.
An hour and the steamer passengers have
seen the ice ship vanish in the distance (;
it is moved in a current of the ocean, and
before long it viii pass to warmer waters
in the south, aud there the frozen craft
will end its journey and melt out of COM
mission.
Icebergs are born every day in every
month, but most of them remain in or
near their native waters for long tina
before they escape and wander TO the
great lanes of travel between here and
Europe. The bergs which will be seen
this summer are from two to ten years
old; that is, they have had an existence
Individually for years, though the ice
from which they are formed is much
older, some of it possibly having been
frozen first thousand years ago. Bergs
are born of glaciers. -Four out of every
five floating masses in the Atlantic come
from Greenland; the fifth may be from
Spitzbergen Sea, Frobisher's Sound. or
Hudson Strait.
A glacier is a river of solid water con-
fined in the depressions running down
the mountain sides. Soft and powdery
snow falls upon the SUBMITS, and though
some is evaporated, the yearly fall is
greater than the yearly loss, aud so the
excess is pushed down the slope into val
leys which possibly at the time are COW
cred with green and have afforded pasture
lands for cattle. The snow gathers in
the high valleys and and every day under
goes some degree of the change which
finally transforms it into ice. Hundreds
of years ago the people who dwelt at the
foot of the Alps, in the Engadine valley,
went up the green hillside and built new
houses. Far above their homes rose the
mountain tops, covered with eternal
snow. Little by little a glacier was
forming upon the lofty slope above the
site of these new houses. The surface of
the soft snow river forced down from the
summit was melted day after day, and
the water trickling into the mass beneath
fIoze by night. Thus the fine feathery
crystals became changed into sponge-like
ice, and as time went on and the guam
tity above increased, the pressure grew
greater, and the sponge ice became
harder and then compact and solid. And
all this while more snow was falling upon
the SUBMITS and was driven down the
mountain side, piled on the surface of
the growing glacier and forced down into
the mass beneath as new ice. Scientists
estimate that with the thickening of the
rigid stream it extended down the hill
side seven inches each year. This
was going truly at a snaips pace,
but at last the slowly creeping river of
ice, crested with melted snow, APP
preached so near the homes built upon
the slope that the people had to move
Their houses, of course, they had to leave
behind them, and in time the solid river
came upon the buildings and broke them
up and smothered the fragments. This
was the Morteratsch Glacier, and many
tourists in Switzerland have looked
upon it. In 1868 there were great floods
in the valley and many bits of the old
dwellings were washed out from under
the ice.
Now, just as this Alpine glacier grew
and flowed down the mountains at the
rate of seven inches a year, so have
greater glaciers grown in colder Green.
land and come down the mountains of
that country to the sea. And these
glacier streams of Greenland are the
parents of the North Atlantic icebergs.
So, too, in Alaska there are tremendous
glaciers, and one of the incidents of an
ordinary Alaskan journey is the cruising
Of your vessel along the coast, where the
glaciers break of and fall into the water.
They are far more beautiful than the
finest of the glaciers of Switzerland, and
in size they are so great that the largest
Alpine glacier would make only fair
sized nose, if it could be taken bodily
and placed upon the face of one of the
Alaskan giants. At Glacier Bay icebergs
are being born all the while. Muir
Glacier, the largest that dips into the
bay, presents a front of 5000 feet. 1t is
700 feet thick, five-sevenths of it being
under water. II extends back for miles
and miles. Each day the central part
moves seventy feet into the sea, the dis
charge every twenty-four hours being
lao, 900, 600 cubic feet of clear ice. As
this great quantity cracks into pieces
from the glacier the bergs of the North
Pacific begin their life. The separation
from the larger mass aud the plunge into
the sea cause terrific noises.
1t is known that the only part of the
land which is not covered completely by
ice is a narrow belt around the shore.
Crossing this belt at hundreds of places
are the glaciers. Some are only a few
hundred feet wide and fifty feet thick,
while others are several miles wide and
measure 1900 feet from surface to bot
tom. All of these ice streams are max
ing their way to the sea, and as their
ends are forced out into the water by the
pressure behind they are broken off and
set adrift as bergs. The rate of move
ment of the glaciers is yariously esti-
mated. The central part of glacier
moves more rapidly than the sides. The
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