as connected zvith the hie Disasters in Baffin'' s Bay. 139 



had always a superstitious dread of the latitude of The DeviVs 

 Thumb. Beyond this he has daily to contend with increasing 

 dangers, compared with which the hazards of the Spitzbergen 

 fishery are very insignificant, and, as he nears Melville Bay, he 

 gets into a region, bearing both on sea and land, the most fright- 

 ful impress- of the terrible power of the dismal winter in those 

 forlorn regions. Throughout several hundred miles of coast, 

 the soil is buried under mountains of ice, which must have been 

 accumulating for ages ; the seaward limits of this tract terminate 

 in a terrible precipice, from one to two thousand feet high, frag- 

 ments from which, weighing thousands of millions of tons, con- 

 stitute the icebergs seen drifting about in the sea, and often 

 aground in water some hundred of fathoms deep. From the 

 cavernous base of this frozen shore, an icy plain in many places 

 takes its origin, stretching ten or twenty leagues out to sea, re- 

 taining its site unmoved, till subdued by the warmth of advan- 

 cing summer. Field-ice of this description, studded with ice- 

 bergs aground, which assist in its formation, is common on the 

 shores of Baffin^s Bay, and the coast of Old Greenland, whence 

 it is called " Land Ice^'' to distinguish it from the fields, floes, 

 icebergs, &c., which are seen drifting about in the sea, and 

 are called " Sea-Ice.^'' The former is fixed, the latter is de- 

 tached, differences on which depends the possibility of navi- 

 gating these regions in spring, for all along the eastern shore, 

 unless prevented by adverse winds, the separated ice recedes 

 from that which is fixed ; thus, a channel is formed along the 

 seaward limits of the land portion, increasing in width as the ice 

 is dissolved. It is through this channel that the whale- fisher 

 pushes his way northward ; but, in early months, the ice con- 

 tinuing uninfluenced by the season, this opening is at best but 

 narrow, often partially obstructed, affording only a tedious and 

 intricate navigation ; frequently it is entirely obliterated, caus- 

 ing a most irksome detention for weeks, and even months. Nor, 

 is this all, for in proportion to the strength of the gale, so is the 

 force with which the ice is hurried towards the shore, then the 

 situation of the mariner caught in the drift becomes one of ex- 

 treme anxiety. While yet a little " open water^' remains, he 

 seeks the lee of some iceberg aground, or some creek in the 

 margin of the land-ice^ or of the big field or floe which drifts 



