and most common is
the tabular form. Bergs of this shape cruise about in thousands and
thousands. A less common form is known as the pinnacled berg, and in
almost every case this is a tabular berg which has been weathered or has
capsized. The number of bergs which calve direct from a mountain glacier
into the sea is probably not very great. Whence then do they come?

The origin of the tabular bergs was debated until a few years ago. They
have been recorded up to forty and even fifty miles in length, and they
have been called floe bergs, because it was supposed that they froze
first as ordinary sea-ice and increased by subsequent additions from
below. But now we know that these bergs calve off from the Antarctic
Barriers, the largest of which is known as the Great Ice Barrier, which
forms the southern boundary of the Ross Sea. We were to become very
familiar with this vast field of ice. We know that its northern face is
afloat, we guess that it may all be afloat. At any rate the open sea now
washes against its face at least forty miles south of where it ran in
the days of Ross. Though this Barrier may be the largest in the world, it
is one of many. The most modern review of this mystery, Scott's article
on The Great Ice Barrier, must serve until the next first-hand
examination by some future explorer.

A berg shows only about one-eighth of its total mass above water, and a
berg two hundred feet high will therefore reach approximately fourteen
hundred feet below the surface of the sea. Winds and currents have far
more influence upon them than they have upon the pack, through which
these bergs plough their way with a total disregard for such flimsy
obstacles, and cause much chaos as they go. For the rest woe betide the
ship which is so fixed into the pack that she cannot move if one of these
monsters bears down upon her.

Words cannot tell the beauty of the scenes through which we were to pass
during the next three weeks. I suppose the pack in winter must be a
terrible place enough: a place of darkness and desolation hardly to be
found elsewhere. But forms which under different conditions can only
betoken horror now conveyed to us impressions of the utmost peace and
beauty, for the sun had kissed them all.

"We have had a marvellous day. The morning watch was cloudy, but it
gradually cleared until the sky was a brilliant blue, fading on the
horizon into green and pink. The floes were pink, floating in a deep blue
sea,