Captain Parry's intended Expedition to the North Pole. 97 



their depth, extent, sharpness, and hardness, often injures the 

 bottom of his passing bark. 



The causes above enumerated are those which annually de- 

 stroy the ice in the Frozen Ocean. The chief of them are wide- 

 ly diffused ; and, if their effects are such as I have noticed, I 

 think we are furnished with matter sufficient to enable us to 

 form reasonable conjectures concerning the state of those seas 

 yet unexplored, which are to become the scene of our adven- 

 turers' investigation during the approaching summer. 



According to the above sketch, we have the ice broken up by 

 expansion and the tempest, and carried away by the currents, &c. 



If what has been said concerning the effects of expansion is 

 correct, — if the dilating influence of the warmth of spring rends 

 the ice in pieces, then the whole of it, independent of every other 

 cause, will be traversed with fissures forming, by their circuitous 

 routes, detached fields, which will be floated abroad by the cur- 

 rents and winds, and broken up by the waves, as soon as the 

 sea to the leaward is open. 



The opening of the sea is a progressive process. Early in 

 spring the devastation commences on the great margin extend- 

 ing from Labrador eastward, and often, in April, reaches the 

 north of Spitzbergen, and clears the western shores of Nova 

 Zembla. At first the process proceeds with rapidity ; for the 

 young ice is easily broken up ; and, during the first months, 

 the storms are most frequent and protracted : then no fields are 

 met with, but sludge^ Jloes, packs, and streams, are scattered 

 over the face of the sea. Whales, about this period, are gene- 

 rally met with in greatest abundance ; for the interior ice, con- 

 tinuing close, forces them to remain where they can reach the 

 surface for respiration. As the season advances, the atmosphere 

 becomes more settled, and the stronger northern ice opposes 

 more resistance to its effects ; and now the current is the most 

 active agent ; hence fields become more numerous, which are 

 seldom met with in groups, except considerably to the eastward, 

 where they are largest. 



As these large plains are drifted off from the main body, and 

 followed by others, it is probable that, throughout the track of 

 the current, the ice, being divided by fissures, may be more or 

 less in motion ; so that, by August and September, the greatest 



OCTOBEll DECEMBER 1826. G 



