A VERY stirring and graphic description of how icebergs are formed and projected from glaciers is given by Mr. John Muir in the Century. Of the glacier that bears his name, Mr. Muir says: “The number of bergs given off varies somewhat with the weather and the tides. For twelve consecutive hours I counted the number discharged that were large enough to make themselves heard like thunder at a distance of a mile or two, and found the average rate to be one in five or six minutes. The thunder of the largest may be heard, under favorable circumstances, ten miles or more. When a large mass sinks from the upper fissured portion of the wall, there is first a keen, piercing crash, then a deep, deliberate, long-drawn-out, thundering roar, which slowly subsides into a comparatively low, far-reaching, muttering growl; then come a crowd of grating, clashing sounds from the agitated bergs that dance in the waves about the newcomer as if in welcome; and these, again, are followed by the swash and roar of the berg-waves as they reach the shore and break among the boulders.
“But the largest and most beautiful of the bergs, instead of falling from the exposed weathered portion of the wall, rise from the submerged portion with a still grander commotion, heaving aloft nearly to the top of the wall, with awful roaring, tons of water streaming like hair down their sides, while they heave and plunge again and again before they settle in poise and sail away as blue crystal islands, free at last after being held fast as part of a slow crawling glacier for centuries. And how wonderful it seems that ice formed from pressed snow on the mountains two or three hundred years ago should, after all its toil and travel in grinding down and fashioning the face of the landscape, still remain pure and fresh and lovely in color! When the sunshine is pouring and sifting in iris colors through the midst of all this wilderness of angular crystal ice, and through the grand, flame-shaped jets and sheets of radiant spray ever rising from the blows of the falling bergs, the effect is indescribably glorious.”
