ICEBERGS. 157 



women, all unmarried, two of them mere girls, who lived 

 in the same cabin with the men, but stowed away in 

 dark holes and corners of the apartment. They were 

 paid from ^10 to ^10, 7s. for the voyage of five months, 

 or a little over a dollar a week, and their work was tO' 

 " head," " gut," split, and salt the fish. ' Everything about 

 the interior was forlorn, dirty, greasy, and not a soul 

 aboard had apparently washed for weeks. 



We remained one more day in Square Island Harbor, 

 the 14th, which ended in a thunder-shower and a west- 

 erly squall, which cleared the harbor of ice and gave 

 promise of release from our two weeks' imprisonment. 

 It was warm and sultry in the forenoon, the westerly 

 wind bringing in swarms of mosquitoes and black-flies, 

 especially annoying while I was ashore beating the herb- 

 age and bushes for insects. 



On the 15th we slipped out of our stone jug at 

 Square Island, and with a mild southvirest breeze, which 

 freshened in the afternoon, we gaily picked our way 

 through the ice and amongst the icebergs up the lane 

 between the shore and the ice-pack, now fairly shoved 

 to the eastward some miles from land. At noon, after 

 making about ten miles, we lay to near a superb marble- 

 white berg, weather-, rain-, and wave-worn, broad at the 

 base, indented by a deep bay, into which the sea-swell 

 rushed and foamed. Wasson and Phoenix got out their 

 boat and rowed around it; Bradford made studies in oil 

 of its many phases, its blues so impossible to thoroughly 

 catch, as well as its ineffable purples. Another berg was 

 like a huge block of city buildings, the foundations hun- 

 dreds of feet beneath the waves ; another was a huge 



