88 ARCTIC ICE. 



a peculiar brightness is observed to be reflected on the air ; 

 and as there is generally present some vapour above the 

 ice, the brightness is somewhat of a yellow tinge. A strong 

 wind blowing over one of those fields of ice, which are usually, 

 if not always covered with snow, the frozen snow is drifted 

 along the clouds, and is peculiarly annoying, both from the 

 increased cold and the sharpness of the particles. The 

 sailors call those drifts the barbers, from the eH'ects pro- 

 duced by them upon the face. Mr. Ellis represents this 

 drift of snow in Hudson's Bay, coming with a north- 

 westerly wind, excessively keen, as small as grains of 

 sand. 



On the approach of spring, the winds, becoming violent, 

 stir the sea very much, and this field ice then breaks up, 

 and being carried forward, the pieces, crushing against 

 each other, produce smaller ones, until the greater part is 

 reduced to inconsiderable fragments : and these again, by 

 the violence of succeeding winds, and the tossing of the 

 waves, are heaped rudely on each other, and form what 

 seamen call a pack of ice. The pack afterwards sepa- 

 rating, the force of current, or some point of land, perhaps, 

 breaks the aggregation into a less extensive and scattered 

 train, Avhich is then called a stream of ice. The packed 

 ice is most dangerous to ships ; for, if a vessel have the 

 misfortune to be involved in such a situation, and it come 

 to blow severely, the whole weight of this body presses 



