NATURAL HISTORY. 



537 



motion, the eoniequences may 

 poisibly be conceived ! The weaker 

 field is crushed with an awful 

 noise ; sometimes the destruction 

 is mutual : pieces of huge dimen- 

 sions and weight, are not unfre- 

 quently piled upon the top, to the 

 height of twenty or thirty feet, 

 whilst doubtless a proportionate 

 quantity is depressed beneath. 

 The Tiew of those stupendous 

 effects in safety, exhibits a picture 

 sublimely grand ; but where there 

 is danger of being overwhelmed, 

 terror and disiuay must be the 

 predominant feelings. The whale- 

 fishers at all times require unre- 

 mitting vigilance to secure their 

 safety, but scarcely in any situa- 

 tion so much, as when navigating 

 amidst those fields : in foggy wea- 

 therj they are particularly dan- 

 gerous, as their motions cannot 

 then be distinctly observed. It 

 may easily be imagined, that the 

 strongest ship can no more with- 

 stand the shock of the contact of 

 two fields, than a sheet of paper 

 can stop a musket-ball. Num- 

 bers of vessels, since the establish- 

 ment of the fishery, have been 

 thus destroyed ; some have been 

 thrown upon the ice, some ha\ e 

 had their hulls completely torn 

 open, and others have been buried 

 beneath the heaped fragments of 

 the ice. 



In the year 1 804, I had a good 

 opportunity of witnessing the ef- 

 fects produced by the lesser masses 

 in motion. Passing between two 

 fields of bay-ice, about a foot in 

 thickness, they were observed ra- 

 . pidly to approach each other, and 

 before our ship could pass the 

 strait, they met with a velocity of 

 three or four miles per liour : the 

 one overlaid the other, and pre- 



sently covered many acres of sur' 

 face. The ship proving an ob" 

 stack to the coiuse of the ice, i* 

 squeezed up on both sides, .shaking 

 her in a (h'eadful manner, .-iud 

 producing a loud grinding, or 

 lengthened acute tremulous noise, 

 accordingly as the degree of pres- 

 sure Avas diminished or increased, 

 until it had risen as high as the 

 deck. After about two hours, the 

 velocity was diminished to a state 

 of rest ; and soon afterwards, the 

 two sheets of ice receded from 

 each other, nearly as rapidly as 

 they before advanced. The ship, 

 in this case, did not receive any 

 injury, but had the ice been only 

 half a foot tliicker, she wouhl 

 probably have been wrecked. 



In the month of May of the pre- 

 sent year, (1813), I witnessed a 

 more tremendous scene. Whilst 

 navigating amidst the most pon- 

 derous ice which the Greenland 

 seas present, in the prospect of 

 making our escajjc from a state of 

 beset ment, our progress was un- 

 expectedly 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 coUison, to observe 

 the state of tlie bar which now 

 prevented our release. 1 inmie- 

 diately discovered that the two 

 points had but recently met ; that 

 already a prodigious mass of rub- 

 bish had been scjueezed ujjon the 

 top, and that the motion had not 

 abated. The fields continued to 

 overlay each other with a majestic 



