260 Our North Land. 



Channel, where, in latitudes yet unexplored, glaciers exist, yielding 

 to the waters of the sea their mighty treasures — an annual supply — 

 some of them of immense size. There is no doubt of their exclusive 

 glacial character, and of the fact that Fox Channel, which is but a 

 northerly continuation of Hudson's Strait, finds the source of its 

 currents far up into the Arctic and Polar Seas, and that its shores 

 are mountainous, and otherwise contain all the requisites for the 

 production of these wonders of northern waters. 



Icebergs also enter the Strait through Gabriel Channel, a con- 

 nection between Davis's Strait and Hudson Strait, between Resolu- 

 tion Island and East Bluff, or the north main coast. The strength 

 of the polar current in this channel is great ; and, when winds are 

 favourable, numbers of bergs find their way through it into Hudson 

 Strait only to be driven out into the North Atlantic again by strong 

 currents and north-west winds. 



Aside from the icebergs, which are scarcely worthy to be regarded 

 as an obstacle to navigation, there is the ordinary field-ice, the 

 product from the waters of Hudson's Bay and Strait: or what I 

 shall call local ice. This ice forms in immense quantities in the 

 months of December, January, February and March, and is never 

 stationary, except in bays and inlets, and in sheltered places along 

 the shores. It is ever on the move, surging to and fro with wind 

 and current, and continually passes out into the North Atlantic, to 

 be carried with the polar current to warmer latitudes, where it is 

 dissolved. 



The local ice attains to a thickness of from five to eight feet 

 seldom thicker, and, owing to the velocity of the tidal currents and 

 the force of the winds, is generally broken into sheets or pans, 

 ranging in superficial measurement of various sizes, some not more 

 than three by five yards, and others twenty by sixty yards, the aver- 

 age being about five by fifteen yards. These sheets are very 

 irregularly shaped, and as a consequence cannot be driven so closely 

 together as that open water is not always everywhere visible among 

 them. 



There are times of course in the months of winter when, with a 

 strong tidal current and a stronger contrary wind, these ice-floes are 



