1818. BUCHAN, PARRY, AND FRANKLIN. 373 



In fact the ice-bergs and those vast fields of ice 

 which float about on the sea, and are wafted down 

 by currents into the Atlantic, are chiefly formed 

 on coasts and in bays, in narrow straits and at the 

 mouths of great rivers. The whole coast of Sibe- 

 ria is a fertile source of this supply. The multi- 

 tude of large rivers which fall into the polar sea, 

 by carrying down alluvial earth, have formed 

 numerous expansive and shallow bays of fresh 

 water, which, in the course of the winter, become 

 so many solid masses of ice. As the sources of 

 these rivers and a great part of their course are in 

 more southern latitudes, where they never freeze, 

 the water they supply is, in the winter, dammed up 

 near the mouth, and ice-bergs are formed, which, 

 when broken loose, are drifted out to sea. In the 

 same manner the field ice is formed in the straits 

 and bays and on shallow coasts, which, when set 

 afloat in the spring, is carried out into the sea; in 

 this situation it is drifted about till heaped piece on 

 piece, and driven about, it again fixes itself among 

 archipelagos of islands, on shallow coasts, and in 

 straits, bays and inlets, where each field becomes 

 a nucleus for an increased accumulation — as in the 

 straits of Bellisle and Behring, for instance, and in 

 every part of Hudson's Bay, down to the latitude of 

 50°. One vast chain of field ice is usually found 

 wedged in between the eastern coast of Green- 

 land and Spitzbergen, in the direction of north- 

 east and south-west, which, as the summer ad- 



