ICE FIELDS. 53 



the motion of the water soon disperses them, and the ships 

 imprisoned by them find a free passage. But a day of cahii is still 

 sufficient to unite the dispersed masses, which oscillate and grind 

 against each other with a strange noise, which sailors compare to 

 the yelping of young dogs. 



When a ship is shut up in one of these floating ice-fields, inexplicable 

 changes sometimes occur amid their vast incoherent aggregations. 

 Vessels which appear to their crew immovable are found in a few hours 

 to have completely reversed their positions. Two ships shut in at a 

 short distance from each other were driven many leagues asunder 

 without being able to perceive any change in the surrounding ice. 

 At other times ships are drawn along with the floating ice-fields, just as 

 the white bears are who make long voyages at sea upon these monster 

 vehicles. In 1777 the Dutch vessel the Wilhelmma was carried 

 along with some other whaling ships from 80^ north back to 62^, in 

 sight of the Iceland coast. During this terrible journey the ships 

 were broken up one after the other. More than 200 persons 

 perished, and the remainder at last reached land with difficulty. 



Lieutenant De Haven, navigating in search of Sir J ohn Franklin, 

 was caught in the ice in the middle of the channel in Wellington 

 Strait. During the nine months which he remained in captivity, he 

 drifted nearly 1,300 miles towards the south ; and the ship Resolute, 

 abandoned by Captain Kellet in an ice-field of immense extent, was 

 drifted towards the south with this vast mass to a much greater 

 distance. 



Some curious speculations are hazarded by Dr. Maury, arising 

 out of some investigations of his upon the winds and currents, some 

 facts seeming to indicate the existence of a climate, mild by com- 

 parison, within the Antarctic Circle. These indications are a low 

 barometer, a high degree of aerial rarefaction, and strong winds from 

 the north. " The winds," he says, " were the first to whisper of 

 this strange state of things, and to intimate to us that the Antarctic 

 climates are in winter very unlike the Arctic for rigour and severity." 

 The result of an immense mass of observation on the polar and 

 equatorial winds reveals a marked difl"erence in atmospherical move- 

 ments north, as compared with the same movements south, of the 

 Equator ; the equatorial winds of the northern hemisphere being only 

 in excess between the tenth and thirteenth parallels, while those of 

 the southern hemisphere are dominant over a zone of 45*^, or from 

 35*^ south to 10° north. 



" The fact that the influence of the polar indraught upon the 

 winds should extend from the Antarctic to the parallel of 40^ south, 



