298 A Voyage to the Coast of Labrador and Queléc, with Remarks. 
winter or in spring, we particularly find, that in proportion as she 
proceeds westward to certain meridians on this side the banks, 
the cold winds from the north, the eastward, northern eastward, 
or northern westward, become ‘less piercing, and the temperature 
accordingly more congenial to the feelings; and that in pro- 
ceeding further westward from these, the temperature gradually 
decreases, and the winds, from whatever point of the compass 
they rea become colder. and colder, until the sensations in- 
duced by the biting blasts indicate the proximity of lands im- 
pregnated with frost or covered with snow, or the contiguity of 
islands or mountains of ice in winter, or ws fields or islands of it 
m spring, that are impelled in the respective directions of the 
winds or currents; these (as I stated before) are the remain- 
ders of immense islands or mountains of. it from Hudson’s Bay, 
&e. driven to the southward, and borne round Newfoundland, 
or those fields that have drifted through the gulf, and become in- 
ereased there out of the river St. Laurence, on the breaking up 
or partial solution of the ice. 
The early or protracted congealment in winter of those vast 
sheets of water the lakes of Canada, and the speedy or late 
solution of the ice in spring, naturally implies great irregu- 
larity of temperature in those parts of America. This irregu- 
larity of congealment, or solution, particularly extends to the 
river St. lodardnce soe Gulf, and has a corresponding influence 
on the temperature of the adjacent coast and Newfoundland, 
‘independent of that arising from those immense masses occa- 
sionally from the northward. Sometimes the river St. Laurence 
is frozen up in Noveniber ; sometimes: not until December or 
January; and sometimes it is but partially and thinly congealed. 
On the other hand, the solution of the ice takes place sometimes 
in March, and oftentimes not until the end of April, or begin- 
ning of May. The river was crossed over on foot at Quebec so 
late as the 4th of May last ; yet the Baltic was open the whole 
of the preceding winter. It is therefore obvious, that an early or 
protracted solution of the ice is not always the consequence of 
an early or protracted congealment of it; it is often vice versd. 
-From the slowness and protraction of the infusion of the matter 
of heat into the icy waters of the river St. Laurence. it is consi- 
dered highly imprudent to bathe in it previous to midsummer, 
The occasional rise of fogs or mists may, I think, be accounted 
for by some.of those principles laid down elsewhere in my obser- 
vations on the chinate of the Mediterranean; but those con= 
tinual dense fogs or heavy mists peculiar to great banks, and in 
-all probability Ealibected with or dependent on other occult phe- 
nomena, cannot be exclusively referred to those. general laws of 
nature alone. Those parts noticed for different. soundings, or 
as 
, : 
