APPENDIX. 149 



nant feelings. The whale-fishers at all times re- 

 quire unremitting vigilance to secure their safety, 

 but scarcely in any situation, so much as when na- 

 vigating amidst those fields. In foggy weather 

 they are particularly dangerous, as their motion 

 cannot then be distinctly observed. It may easily 

 be imagined, that the strongest ship can no more 

 withstand the shock of the contact of two fields, 

 than a sheet of paper can stop a musket ball. Num- 

 bers of vessels, since the establishment of the fish- 

 ery, have been thus destroyed. Some have been 

 thrown upon the ice ; some have had their hulls 

 completely torn open; and others have been buried 

 beneath the heaped fragments of the ice. 



"■ In the year 1804, I had a good opportunity of 

 witnessing the effects produced by the lesser mas- 

 ses in motion. Passing between two fields of bav- 

 ice, about a foot in thickness, they were observed 

 rapidly to approach each other, and before our ship 

 could pass the strait, they met, with a velocity of 

 three or four miles per hour ; the one overlaid the 

 other, and presently covered many acres of surface. 

 The ship proving an obstacle to the course of the 

 ice, it squeezed up on both sides, shaking her in a 

 dreadful manner, and producing a loud grinding, 

 orlengthened and acute tremulous noise, accord- 

 ingly as the degree of pressure was diminished or 



