STORY OF CAPTAIN WARRENS. 153 



" They thought of his worth, but no words found birth, 



To tell of the love they bore him ; 

 But the sea-bird's wail, and the stormy gale, 



And the roar of the ocean wave, 

 Sung deep and long the funeral song 



O'er the seaman's traceless grave." 



In this connection, it is not unsuitable to 

 give place to what an accredited writer in the 

 Westminster Review relates of an incident, or 

 rather a dread tragedy, in the Greenland whale- 

 fishery, which is almost too appalling and un- 

 paralleled, not to say impossible, to be be- 

 lieved : 



One serene evening in the middle of August, 

 1775, Captain Warrens, the master of a Green- 

 land whale ship, found himself becalmed among 

 an immense number of icebergs, in about 77 

 of north latitude. On one side, and within a 

 mile of his vessel, these were of immense height, 

 and closely wedged together, and a succession 

 of snow-covered peaks appeared behind each 

 other as far as the eye could reach, showing 

 that the ocean was completely blocked up in 

 that quarter, and that it had probably been so 

 for a long period of time. Captain Warrens 



