becomes an iceberg and floats away.

One of the incidents of an ordinary Alaskan cruise along the coast is to
see the glaciers break off 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 a
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. It is 700
feet thick, five-sevenths of it being under water. It extends back for
miles and miles.

Each day the central part moves 70 feet into the sea, the discharge
every twenty-four hours being 140,000,000 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
and the plunge into the sea cause terrific noises.

The interior of Greenland is a solid mass of ice. In fact, some people
think that at about the central part of Greenland there is a high
mountain, around whose sides there has grown through the centuries an
enormous glacier, sending down in every direction branch glaciers that
extend to the coast. It 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 50 feet thick, while others are several
miles wide and measure 1500 feet from surface to bottom.