Note 44 — Chapter XIII

With respect to the possibility of even ice accumulating at the bottom of the sea, I shall only refer to the following passage taken from the English translation of the Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, by Captain W. Graah, Danish Royal Navy. “Nor is this the only danger to be apprehended: the ice off this blink, even to a considerable distance from it, being said to shoot up from the bottom of the sea in such a manner, and in such masses, as in many years to make it utterly impassable. How to account for the phenomenon to which I have just adverted I know not, unless by supposing that the bottom of the sea itself is hereabouts like the dry land covered with a thick crust of ice. But whether this crust is formed upon the spot, or is the remains of icebergs and the heavy drift-ice frozen to the bottom during severe winters, or a portion of the land-ice, which loaded with stones and fragments of the crumbling hill has protruded itself into the sea, is a problem impossible, perhaps to solve.” Again he says: “We passed it without any accident, and without having observed any thing of that upheaving of the ice off it, to which allusion has been made, though the fact of its occurrence cannot be doubted, the very name of the place, Puisortok, being thence derived.” It seems fully established on excellent testimony (see Journ. of Geograph. Soc., vol. v., p. 12, and vol. vi., p. 416; also a collection of notices in Edinburgh Journal of Nat. and Geograph. Soc., vol. ii., p. 55), that fresh-water rivers in Russia and Siberia, and even in England, often freeze at the bottom, and that the flakes of ice when they rise to the surface, often “bring with them large stones.” All that seems to be required in producing ground-ice, is, that there should be sufficient movement in the fluid, so that the whole is cooled down to the freezing point, and then the water crystallizes, wherever there is a point of attachment.