312 The Arctic Regions. 
external cold; and cowering about the stove er the lamp, they 
seek to doze away the tedious night. Their slender stock of pro- 
visions, though kept in the same apartment, is often frozen so 
hard as to require to he cut with a hatchet. The whole of the 
inside of their hut becomes lined with a thick crust of ice; and, 
if they happen for an instant to open a window, the moisture of 
the confined air is immediately precipitated in the form of a 
shower of snow. As the frost continues to penetrate deeper, the 
rocks are heard at a distance to split with loud explosions. The 
sleep of death seemstowrap up the scene in utter and oblivious ruin. 
At length the sun re-appears above the horizon; but his lan- 
guid beams rather betray the wide waste, than brighten the pro- 
spect. By degrees, however, the further progress of the frost is 
checked. In the month of May, the famished inmates venture 
to leave their hut in quest of fish on the margin of the sea. As 
the sun acquires elevation, his power is greatly increased. The 
snow gradually wastes away; the ice dissolves apace; the vast 
fragments of it, detached from the cliffs, and undermined beneath, 
precipitate themselves on the shores with the noise and crash of 
thunder. The ocean is now unbound, and its icy dome broken 
up with tremendous rupture. The enormous fields of ice, thus 
set afloat, are, by the violence of winds and currents, again dis- 
severed and dispersed. Sometimes impelled in opposite direc- 
tions, they approach and strike with a mutual shock, like the 
crash of worlds; sufficient, if opposed, to reduce to atoms in a 
moment the proudest monuments of human power. It is impos- 
sible to picture a situation more awful than that of the poor crew 
of a whaler, who see their fraii bark thus fatally inclosed, ex- 
pecting immediate and inevitable destruction. 
Before the end of June, the shoals of ice in the arctic seas are 
commonly divided, scattered, and dissipated. But the atmosphere 
is then almost continually damp, and loaded with vapour. At’ 
this season of the year, a dense fog generally covers the surface 
of the sea, of a milder temperature indeed than the frost-smoke, 
yet produced by the inversion of the same cause. The lower 
stratum of air, as it successively touches the colder body of water, 
becomes chilled, and thence disposed to deposit its moisture. 
Such thick fogs, with mere gleams of clear weather, infesting 
the northern seas during the greater part of the summer, render 
their navigation extremely dangerous. In the course of the month 
of July, the superficial water is, at last, brought to an equili- 
brium of temperature with the air, and the sun now shines out 
with a bright and dazzling radiance. For some days before the 
close of the summer, such excessive heat is accumulated in the 
bays and sheltered spots, that the tar and pitch are sometimes 
melted, and run down the ships’ sides. 
The 
