CHAP. XXXIV. ANCHOR ICE. 209 



Labrador at the end of November, and in the montli of 

 December, and is both dangerous and precarious by reason 

 of the severity of the cold at that season, and of the 

 moving ice-fields which often break through the sets, and 

 tear the nets, if care is not taken to take them up. The 

 seals are no sooner taken out of the water than they become 

 frozen, and in that state they are put into stores, and it is 

 not until the spring, when the warm air has softened them, 

 that they are cut up, and their fat melted in iron pots. 



Occasionally the rather curious phenomenon of nets 

 freezinsj under water occurs on the Labrador coast. Mr. 

 Samuel Robertson, who resides at Sparr Point, Bradore 

 Bay, says : ' I have seen a net, sixty feet deep, every mesh 

 encased with ice like a rushlight; hawsers, chains, and 

 other larger matters, with a proportionably greater crust. 

 When this happens, if the net is not taken up immediately, 

 it is lost ; for it soon floats like a cork, though ever so 

 heavily sunk, and then forms a solid block of ice. I have 

 known the bottom at a depth of sixty or seventy feet 

 frozen, and resembling a limestone flat ; and all the 

 anchors of a seal fishery, whose flukes were fixed in the 

 sand so firmly that no purchase could draw them out. 

 I have seen, on another occasion, when the fluke of an 

 anchor was only partially buried, when drawn out, the 

 palm brought up a piece of frozen sand, as angular as a 

 stone, and nearly as hard as a piece of Bristol sandstone.' 



Anchor ice is a common phenomenon in the St. Law- 

 rence, and some very interesting observations have been 

 made with regard to it by T. C. Keefer, Esq., C. E.* It 



The average winter level of tlie St. Lawrence^ opposite Montreal, is 

 about fifteen feet above the summer one, but the extreme range from the 

 VOL. II. P 



