94 ARCTIC ICE. 



mountains which he saw, and which Avere stained brown 

 by contact with rocks, induced him to conclude that they 

 must have descended from high situations on the land. 

 This, however, may rather be explained by these bergs 

 having received the broAvn tinge, by striking against rocks, 

 or jutting points of land, in their passage into the sea, 

 from the original place in which they had been formed. 

 Mr. EUis states, that no ice mountains were to be seen in 

 Repulse Bay, which is in the bottom of Hudson's Bay. 



Had any of those gentlemen been so high as the seventy- 

 seventh or seventy-eighth degree of latitude in Davis's 

 Straits, they would have an easy means of accounting for 

 this phenomenon. In the view of the extensive chain of 

 islands (to which I have presumed to give the name of 

 the Linnean Isles), which stretch across the straits east 

 and west, very nearly in a circular curve, as far as the 

 power of vision can ascertain, there lies an immense con- 

 tinent of ice, rising towards the Pole, and towards the islands 

 before mentioned, descending like the regular declivity of 

 the land mentioned by Bruce in the approach to the sources 

 of the Nile. In this descent innumerable channels are visible, 

 eaten away by the snow which is dissolved annually under 

 the presence of the sun. In some places it out-tops the 

 islands, but leans upon them all ; and it is probably owing 

 to this very chain of islands presenting an impenetrable 



