IX.] EXTRACT FROM THE " MONITEUR." 145 



The little English schooner follows us bravely ; bounding 

 in our track, and avoiding only by a constant watchfulness 

 and incessant attention to the helm the icebergs that we 

 have cleared. 



But the difficulties of this navigation are nothing in clear 

 weather, as compared to what they are in a fog. Then, 

 notwithstanding the slowness of the speed, it requires as 

 much luck as skill to avoid collisions. Thus it happened 

 that after having escaped the ice a first time, and having 

 steered E.N.E., we found ourselvess uddenly, towards two 

 o'clock of that same day (the 9th), not further than a 

 quarter of a mile from the field ice which the fog had hidden 

 from us. . Generally speaking, the Banquise that we coasted 

 along for three days, and that we traced with the great- 

 est care for nearly a hundred leagues,, presented to us an 

 irregular line of margin, running from W.S.W. to E.N.E., 

 and thrusting forward toward the south — capes and pro- 

 montories of various sizes, and serrated like the teeth of a 

 saw. Every time that we bore up for E.N.E., we soon found 

 ourselves in one of the gulfs of ice formed by the indenta- 

 tions of the Banquise. It was only by steering to the S.W. 

 that we got free from the floating icebergs, to resume our 

 former course as soon as the sea was clear. 



The further we advanced to the northward, the thicker 

 became the fog and more intense the cold (two degrees 

 centig, below zero) ; and snow whirled round in squalls of 

 wind, and fell in large flakes on the deck. The ice began 

 to present a new aspect, and to assume those fantastic 

 and terrible forms and colours, which painters have made 

 familiar to us. At one time it assumed the appearance of 

 mountain-peaks covered with snow, furrowed with valleys 

 of green and blue; more frequently they appeared like a 

 wide flat plateau, as high as the ship's deck, against which 

 the sea rolled with fury, hollowing its edges into gulfs, or 

 breaking them into perpendicular cliffs or caverns, into 

 which the sea rushed in clouds of foam. 



We often passed close by a herd of seals, which — stretched 



10 



