PHYSICAL AND CLIMATAL CONDITIONS. 109 



yards to many acres in extent. The uniform and 

 unbroken mass of ice in the winter months has no lateral 

 motion ; it rises and falls with the tide, but is unaffected 

 by winds until the warmth of spring softens its hold on 

 the islands to which it is keyed. When the pans are 

 pressed on the coast by winds, they accommodate them- 

 selves to all the sinuosities of the shore-line, and being 

 pushed by the unfailing arctic current, which brings down 

 a constant supply of floe ice, the pans rise over all the 

 low-lying parts of the islands, grinding and polishing 

 exposed shores, and rasping those that are steep-to. The 

 pans are shoved over the flat surfaces of the islands, and 

 remove with irresistible force every obstacle which 

 opposes their thrust, for the attacks are constantly 

 renewed by the ceaseless ice-stream from the north-east, 

 and this goes on uninterruptedly for a month or more. 

 Sometimes a change in the wind brings the endless sheet 

 back again, and it is the middle of July before some of 

 the fiords are clear of ice. Hence boulders, shingle, and 

 beaches are rarely seen except in sheltered nooks and 

 coves, and the masses, pushed or torn from those surfaces 

 where cleavage offers a chance of disruption, are urged 

 into the sea and rounded into boulder form by the rasping 

 and polishing pans. 



" But this is not all of the work of pan ice. The bottom 

 of the sea, to the depth of twelve or fifteen feet, and at 

 all less depths, is smoothed and planed by the drifting 

 masses when they pile one on the other, and at depths 

 less than eight feet, when the pans are driven before the 

 wind or carried by the currents. In sailing from Aillik 

 to Nain or to Cape Mugford, the fishermen send a man 

 aloft to look out for ' White Kocks.' These are promin- 

 ences or swells in the general level of the sea-bottom 



