Soy ae) ee Ts Za BE Ee RVG) Ee N. 
of the Seals, on which thofe animals at times frolic by hundreds. The motion of 
the leffer pieces is as rapid as the currents: the greater, which are fometimes two 
hundred leagues long, and fixty or eighty broad *, move flow and majeftically ; often 
fix for a time, immoveable by the power of the ocean, and then produce near the 
horizon that bright white appearance, called by mariners the blink of the ice t. 
The approximation of two great fields produces a moft fingular phenomenon ; it 
forces the lefler (if the term can be applied to pieces of feveral acres {quare) out of 
the water, and adds them to their furface: a fecond, and often a third fucceeds ; fo 
that the whole forms an aggregate of a tremendous height. Thefe float in the fea 
‘like fo many rugged mountains, and are fometimes five or fix hundred yards thick ¢ ; 
but the far greater part is concealed beneath the water. Thefe are continually 
encreafed in height by the freezing of the fpray of the fea, or of the melting of 
the fnow, which falls on them. Thofe which remain in this frozen climate, re- 
ceive continual growth; others are gradually wafted by the northern winds into 
fouthern latitudes, and melt by degrees, by the heat of the fun, till they wafte away, 
or difappear in the boundlefs element. 
The collifion of the great fields of ice, in high latitudes, is often attended with a 
noife that for a time takes away the fenfe of hearing any thing elfe ; and the lefler 
with a grinding of un{peakable horror. 
The water which dafhes againft the mountanous ice freezes into an infinite 
variety of forms; and gives the voyager ideal towns, ftreets, churches, fteeples, 
and every fhape which imagination can frame ||. 
The Icebergs, or Glacieres of the north-eaft of Spitzbergen, are among the ca- 
pital wonders of the country ; they are feven in number, but at confiderable 
diftances from each other: each fills the vallies for traéts unknown, in a region ’ 
totally inacceffible in the internal parts. The glacieres of Switzerland {eem con- 
temptible to thefe ; but prefent often a fimilar front into fome lower valley. The 
laft exhibits over the fea a front three hundred feet high, emulating the emerald 
in color: cataracts of melted {now precipitate down various parts, and black fpir- 
ing mountains, ftreaked with white, bound the fides, and rife crag above crag, 
as far as eye can reach in the back ground §. 
At times immenfe fragments break off, and tumble into the water, with a moft 
alarming dafhing. A piece of this vivid green fubftance has fallen, and grounded 
in twenty-four fathoms water, and fpired above the furface fifty feet **. Simi- 
* Crantz, i. 41. + Phips, 72. t Ellis’s Voy, 127. || Marten, 37+ Crantz, 
i. 31. § See the beautiful plate in Phips’s Voy, tab. vii *® Phips, p. 70. 
lar 
LXXXV 
LIcenERGse 
