144 THE WHALEMAN ) OR, 



Captain Sir John Ross saw several icebergs in 

 Baffin's Bay aground in water fifteen hundred 

 feet deep ! Many of them are driven down into 

 Hudson's Bay, and, accumulating there, diffuse 

 excessive cold over the entire continent ; so that 

 Captain Franklin reports that, at the mouth of 

 Haye's River, which lies in the same latitude as 

 the north of Prussia or the south of Scotland, 

 ice is found every where, in digging wells, in 

 summer, at the depth of four feet. " It is a well- 

 known fact that, every four or five years, a large 

 number of icebergs floating from Greenland 

 double Cape Langaness, and are stranded on the 

 west coast of Iceland. The inhabitants are then 

 aware that their crops of hay will fail in conse- 

 quence of fogs, which are generated almost in- 

 cessantly ; and the dearth of food is not confined 

 to the land, for the temperature of the water is 

 so changed that the fish entirely desert the 

 coast." 



As to the relative thickness of common field 

 ice where it remained unbroken through the win- 

 ter, we found it varied from ten to twenty-five 

 feet in thickness. We had an opportunity of 

 judging, from the fact that we examined several 

 openings which the natives had made in the ice 

 off East Cape for the purpose of taking seal. 



The sudden disappearance of large and ex- 



