DRIFT ICE. 25 



thoroughness of exploration and the study of the phenomena of this 

 region. His well chosen language often supplies to us the lack- 

 ing power of expression in descriptions of this kind, and we take 

 his words in preference to our own. On this subject, also, he re- 

 marks : ''In spring, the entrance and the eastern parts of the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence are frequently covered with drift ice, and vessels 

 are sometimes beset with it for many days." I have seen a vessel 

 in the spring of the year closed in on all sides by ice that formed 

 during the night augmented by drift, and obliged to stay there the 

 remainder of the week until the sun broke the surrounding crust 

 and the wind dispersed the drift. Again he says : "Being unfitted 

 for contending with the danger, they often suffer from it and are 

 frequently lost ; but serious accidents from this cause do not occur 

 frequently, because the ice is generally in a melting state from the 

 powerful effects of the sun in spring. In the fall of the year, acci- 

 dents seldom occur from ice, except when the winter commences 

 suddenly, or when vessels linger imprudently late from the tempta- 

 tion of obtaining high freights." Several instances have occurred 

 where boats and small vessels have thus lingered late and been 

 overtaken by the breaking up of previously formed and solid ice 

 by the sun's rays, on some warm day, and thus been carried off into 

 the Gulf, or wrecked on some of the islands or more dangerous 

 portions of the surrounding coast. In the fall when the ice from 

 above breaks up and is taken by the current through the Straits of 

 Belle Isle, ships often run into large floating bergs that are lying 

 about here and there in the water, and directly in the way of nav- 

 igation, and are either crushed by the falling of the berg upon them, 

 if it be a tall and large one (for it must be remembered that from 

 two-fifths to nine-tenths of an iceberg remains under the water, and 

 that, gradually worn away by abrasion and the warmer waters 

 of the current, it has become so brittle that a jar easily displaces it 

 and therefore causes the remainder to assume a different position 

 — by which I mean that the whole structure falls — and thus doing 

 damage according to its size) ; or, again, a vessel going with her 

 usual speed may run into a solid block of ice, where indeed the cur- 



