rOLAR-ICE. — CONCUSSIONS OF FIELDS. 249 



a loud grinding, or lengthened acute tremulous 

 noise, accordingly as the degree of pressure was di- 

 minished or increased, until it had risen as hiffh as 

 the deck. After about two hours, the motion ceased; 

 and soon afterwards, the two sheets of ice receded 

 from each other, nearly as rapidly as they had be- 

 fore advanced. The ship, in this case, did not 

 receive any injury ; but had the ice been only half 

 a foot thicker, she might have been wTecked. 



In the month of May of the year 1814, I wit- 

 nessed a more tremendous scene. While navi- 

 gating amidst the most ponderous ice which the 

 Greenland sea presents, in the prospect of making 

 our escape from a state of hesetmcnt, our progress 

 was unexpectedly arrested by an isthmus of ice, 

 about a mile in breadth, formed by the coalition of 

 the point of an immense field on the north, with 

 that of an aggregation of floes on the south. To 

 the north field we moored the ship, in the hope of 

 the ice separating in this place. I then quitted the 

 ship, and travelled over the ice to the point of col- 

 lision, to observe the state of the bar which now 

 prevented our release. I immediately discovered, 

 that the two points had but recently met ; that al- 

 ready a prodigious mass of rubbish had been squeez- 

 ed upon the top, and that the motion had not abated. 

 The fields continued to overlay each other with a 

 majestic motion, producing a noise resembling that 

 of complicated machinery, or distant thunder. The 



