94 FISHERMEN'S OWN BOOK. 



awhile, each returned to his own vessel, and while some of us ran to the 

 southward, others laid by, waiting for the ice to recede to the northward. 

 We ran down to lat. 43 deg. 30 min. N. and long. 50 deg. 30 min. W., but 

 could find no fish. We were there some days before the weather permitted 

 us to try, and after we hauled our gear we got underway, with a southerly 

 wind, and ran for the western edge of the Bank, intending to strike it north 

 of lat. 44 deg. N. A careful lookout for ice was kept. That evening we 

 spoke the sch. Edwin C. Dolliver at anchor in seventy fathoms, and lay by 

 her for the night. The next morning we made sail, spoke the Dolliver again, 

 and also the schs. Chester R. Lawrence and Restless. The first two were lying 

 at anchor in sixty to seventy fathoms of water, and the Restless lay in forty- 

 nine fathoms. Neither of them caught any halibut. 



The ice, driven by the southerly wind, had at this time drifted back to 

 about 45 deg. N. lat, and we worked to the westward in company with sev- 

 eral other schooners, among which were the Restless, Edwin C. Dolliver^ 

 Alfred Walen, N H. Phillips and John S. Presson; all of them setting trawls 

 under sail in the day, and anchoring and setting their gear at night. In this 

 manner the fleet beat slowly to the westward against a moderate breeze, for 

 several days, trying for fish in water varying from forty-eight to seventy 

 fathoms in depth, but catching nothing. The water was so intensely cold 

 that the frozen baits on the trawls would scarcely thaw when set in fifty 

 fathoms of water, or less, and we were almost forced to believe that the fish 

 had all been driven entirely off of the Bank by the great ice field, and the 

 straggling icebergs. The latter were occasionally seen in the deep water 

 off the edge of the Bank. 



One day we passed by a large berg, about a third of a mile distant from 

 it. On one end of it a sharp pinnacle, resembling the spire of a church, 

 ran up to a height of seventy-five or eighty feet ; the middle was quite low, 

 but the other end rose in a bunch or hummock about twenty feet above the 

 water. The sunlight, playing on this huge mass of ice, throwing lights and 

 shadows here and there, causing the peaks to glitter and gleam for a mo- 

 ment, then darken to a greenish tint, and its constantly changing aspect as 

 we sailed by it, made it an interesting and impressive sight. But the 

 thought that it, or some of its fellows, might drive down on us some foggy 

 and windy night, when we were at anchor, caused us to look upon it with a 

 sense of dread and apprehension instead of the admiration we might have 

 felt in watching such an object under different circumstances.* 



On the last day of March we all set our trawls as usual — some of the ves- 



*A few weeks later it was a common occurrence for the halibut catchers to shift their 

 position to avoid coming in collision with icebergs. On some occasions the vessels were 

 obliged to move a short distance two or three times in one night. 



