TERRORS OF NAVIGATION IN THE ICE. 199 



by far the most dangerous of all the methods in vogue for capturing 

 seals. 



You will remember that at the end of winter enormous herds, chiefly 

 of the harp-seal, come down and congregate upon the floating fields of 

 ice eastward of Newfoundland, where the young are born in March. 

 The largest fishery occurs at that place and season, but the locality is 

 never fixed nor certain ; the fields, approached simultaneously by sailing 

 fleets and steamers from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Scotland, England, 

 France, Germany, and Norway, must be sought for every year as though 

 for the first time. This is in the icy, tempestuous North Atlantic, at 

 the most stormy period of the year. Dreadful gales may drive the ships 

 anywhere .but where they seek to go, bergs may be hurled against them, 

 the ice may jam them between its ponderous edges and crush the doubly 

 braced hulls into splinters, or cleanly cut away parts of the bottom, 

 leaving the vessels to sink and the men to save themselves as best thev 

 may upon broken and drifting ice. Strange to say, steamships are more 

 liable to harm from the ice than sailing-ships, which will be lifted up 

 instead of crushed. Often a field of thin " bay-ice," or a solid floe, will 

 lie right in the path ; then the ship dashes into it as far as its power 

 can force it. When it can move no farther the crew leap overboard, chop 

 and break the field into cakes which are shoved under the floe or hauled 

 out on top ; or, if it is too thick to be broken, saws are brought out, and 

 a canal is slowly made for the ship's progress. This is a time of great 

 desire for haste, and you may well believe that every man works with all 

 his might. 



" Sometimes," writes an eye-witness, "a crowd of men, clinging around 

 the ship's bows, and holding on to the bights of rope . . . would jump 

 and dance on the ice, bending and breaking it with their weight and 

 dragging her on over it with all their force. Up to their knees in water, 

 as one piece after another sank below the cut-water they still held on, 

 hurrahing at every fresh start she made — dancing, jumping, pushing, 

 shoving, hauling, hewing, sawing, till every soul on board was roused 

 into excited exertion." 



Well, when all this toil and danger are passed — sometimes greatly 

 prolonged, in the midst of a frozen sea and the most violent storms — 

 and the ship has the good-luck to sight a herd, then begins for the crew 

 of hardy sailors a season of about the most arduous labor that one can 

 imagine. 



If the weather permits, the vessel is run into the ice and moored .there ; 

 if not, it sails back and forth in open spaces, managed by the captain and 



