498 THE PEOGEESS OF MAEITIME DISCOVEET. 



the ice ; a practice which has been resorted to by whalers in 

 extreme cases, as their only chance of escaping destruction. 



"While we were yet a few fathoms from the ice," says Admiral 

 Beechey, the eloquent eye-witness and narrator of the dreadful 

 scene, " we searched with much anxiety for a place that was 

 more open than the general line of the pack, but in vain ; all 

 parts appeared to be equally impenetrable, and to present one 

 unbroken line of furious breakers, in which immense pieces of 

 ice were heaving and subsiding with the waves. 



" No language, I am convinced, can convey an adequate idea of 

 the terrific grandeur of the effect now produced by the collision 

 of the ice and the tempestuous ocean. The sea violently agi- 

 tated, and rolling its mountainous waves against an opposing 

 body, is at all times a sublime and awful sight ; but when, in 

 addition, it encounters immense masses, which it has set in 

 motion with a violence equal to its own, its effect is prodigiously 

 increased. At one moment it bursts upon these icy fragments, 

 and buries them many feet beneath its wave, and the next, as 

 the buoyancy of the depressed body struggles for reascendency, 

 the water rushes in foaming cataracts over its edges; whilst 

 every individual mass, rocking and labouring in its bed, grinds 

 against and contends with its opponent until one is either split 

 with the shock or upheaved upon the surface of the other. Nor 

 is this collision confined to one particular spot, it is going on as 

 far as the sight can reach ; and when, from this convulsive scene 

 below, the eye is turned to the extraordinary appearance of the 

 blink in the sky above, where the unnatural clearness of a calm 

 and silvery atmosphere presents itself bounded by a dark hard " 

 line of stormy clouds, such as at this moment lowered over our 

 masts, as if to mark the confines within which the efforts of 

 man would be of no avail, the reader may imagine the sensation 

 of awe which must accompany that of grandeur in the mind of 

 the beholder. 



" At this instant, when we were about to put the strength of 

 our little vessel in competition with that of the great icy conti- 

 nent, and when it seemed almost presumption to reckon on the 

 possibility of her surviving the unequal conflict, it was gratify- 

 ing in the extreme to observe in all our crew the greatest calm- 

 ness and resolution. If ever the fortitude of seamen was fairly 

 tried, it was on this occasion ; and I will not conceal the pride I 



