354 CAPTAIN CABTWRIGHT'S 



tial line, that they occasion a constant current to 

 the southward ; by which means the ice is dragged 

 along into a warmer climate, where it is dissolved. 

 The immense islands of ice,^ which are daily 

 to be seen near the coast of Labrador, can be 

 formed in the following manner only. The sea 

 in the extreme north, is of such a depth, that nav- 

 igators have often not been able to JEind the bot- 

 tom with a line of an hundred fathoms, even close 

 to the shore; the land is very high, and many 

 parts of the shore are perpendicular cliffs; the 

 face of the coast being greatly broken, numbers of 

 bays and coves are formed therebv: and those are 

 defended from any swell rolling into them from the 

 sea, by the prodigious quantity of flat, low ice, 

 which almost continuously covers that part of the 

 ocean, and which, it may be presumed, prevents 

 those bays and covers from breaking up for one, 

 two, or more years together. The severe frost of 

 one winter will form flat ice upon them, of an in- 

 credible thickness; that ice is deeply covered with 

 the snows which are continually falling, and a 

 thousand times more is drifted upon it from the 

 adjoining land, until the accumulation is beyond 

 all conception. On the return of summer, the sun 

 and rains cause the snow to become wet and 

 shrink together; when the frost from beneath, 

 striking up through the whole mass, consolidates 

 it into a firm body of ice. In this manner it keeps 

 continually accumulating until the adjoining sea 



* Cartwright never uses the modern term " iceberg," and indeed the 

 Labradorians at the present day speak only of " ice-islands." 



