208 bulletin: museum of compaeative zoology. 



liantly sunlit expanse of water covered with the great fleet and with a 

 long train of icehergs, two of which were probably the loftiest seen 

 during the cruise. 



Headed by the wind, immersed in thick fog, and trapped once more 

 by ice-floes, we lay at anchor in Assizes Harbor on the north side of the 

 straits until the 1 7th, when we escaped again and ran sixty-five miles to 

 Seal Island. Three days' delay by ice and head winds here, and three 

 more at West Bay Head on the south side of Hamilton Inlet, completed 

 the first month of the cruise and evoked many remarks from our skipper 

 on the extraordinary difficulty of " getting down " the coast this season. 

 The failure of westerly and southerly winds and the massive character of 

 the drift-ice so late in the summer were alike unparalleled in his thirty 

 years' experience on this coast. 



" The extraordinary smoothness of the sea covered by drift-ice, even when 

 the pans are widely spaced, is truly astonishing to one making his first voyage 

 in such waters. His sailing ship may be favored with a fresh breeze and yet 

 the ocean surface be quite level, save for the minute rippling characteristic of a 

 small pond ruffled by a summer breeze ; ground-swell does not exist. It is a 

 matter of common knowledge among the fishermen of the Atlantic Labrador 

 coast that the Labrador current, or ' tide,' as they invariably express it, often 

 shows high velocity, although its surface, for. a length of a thousand miles and 

 a breadth variable but at times as much as three hundred miles, is covered 

 with loose pan-ice. At such times, the wind is, or has just been, strong and 

 from a northerly quarter. We are justified in believing that the pans act as 

 the sails which, in ice-free waters, are represented by wind-waves. Floes and 

 pans project above the surface from one to twenty feet or more. They may be 

 expected to exert a coercive force on the film of relatively fresh water derived 

 from the melting of the ice in contact with the heavier salt water beneath. 

 According with the behavior of such ' dead water,' as described by Nansen and 

 others, the light surface layer will tend to move en masse and in the direction 

 of common pull exercised by the wind-driven masses of ice. By reason of 

 friction the motion will be communicated to lower layers of the sea. This 

 cause of surface currents is of importance to the theory of movement of those 

 polar waters which, for several months after the winter ice begins to break up, 

 are free from larger wind-waves. Deprived of its chief sails, the Labrador cur- 

 rent, always sensitive to wind conditions and at times subject to temporary 

 reversal with contrary winds, yet preserves and perhaps exceeds during the 

 period of ice-drift, the average velocity of current-flow for the year." 1 



On the 24th, the mouth of Hamilton Inlet was crossed. Ice afforded 

 little trouble henceforth, but head winds prevailed ; so that, at frequent 



1 Science, Nov., 1900, vol. 12, p. 688. 



