60 



NORTH AMERICA. 



Icehcn's. 



and islands, and its navigation is obstructed during the greater part of the year by fixed or drift 

 ice. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is a large inland sea, communicating with the ocean on the 

 north by the Strait of Belleisle, and on the south by a broad channel between Cape Ray in • 

 Newfoundland, and North Cape on Cape Breton, and by the Gut of Canso, which separates 

 Cape Breton from Nova Scotia. Breadth from east to west 240 miles ; length 300. The 

 Gulf of Mexico extends north and south, from Florida to Yucatan, 600 miles, and east and 

 west from Cuba to the Mexican States, 7U0 miles. It conmuinicates with the Atlantic on the 

 north of Cuba by the Florida Channel, and with the Carribbean Sea on the south by Cuba 

 Channel. 



5. Seas. The Jlrclic Sea is supposed to extend from the northern part of America to the 

 Nortli Pole, but the immense masses of ice which are everywhere met with in this region, 



render it impossible that it should ever 

 be fully explored. These ice-bergs are 

 sometimes hundreds of miles in length, 

 and contain mountains 400 feet in height. 

 The shock of these enormous masses 

 produces a tremendous crash, whi-ch warns 

 the seaman how easily his vessel would 

 be crushed to pieces, if it were caught 

 between these floating islands. Frequent- 

 ly the wood* that drifts upon this sea, 

 takes fire in consequence of the violent 

 friction to which it is exposed by the 

 movement of the ice, and smoke and 

 flames burst forth in the midst of eternal 

 winter. This floating wood is very fre- 

 quently found charred at both ends. In 

 winter, the intensity of the cold is con- 

 tinually bursting asunder the mountains of ice, and at every moment is heard the explosion of 



these masses, which yawn into enormous 

 rents. In spring the movement of the ice 

 more generally consists of the mere overturn- 

 ing of these masses, which lose their equi- 

 librium in consequence )f one part being 

 dissolved before another. The fog which 

 envelopes this melting ice is so dense, that 

 from one extremity of a frigate it is impossi- 

 ble to discern the other. At all seasons, the 

 broken and accumulated ice in the channels 

 or gulfs, equally checks the passage of the 

 adventurer on foot, whom it would instantly 

 overwhelm, and of the mariner, paralyzing 

 the movements of his vessel. 



Numerous expeditions have been despatched 

 in search of what is called the Mortlmest Pas- 

 sage, or a communication between the Atlan- 



Gulf of Mexico, by the famous Bahama Stream, while 

 others are hurried forward by the current, which, to the 

 north of Siberia, constantly sets in from east to west. 

 Some of these large trees, that have been deprived of their 

 bark by friction, are in such a state of preservation as even 

 to form excellent building- timber. If this floating wood 

 however, proceed from forests that are still actually in 

 existence, another part appears to us to have a more re- 

 mote origin, and to be connected with the great revolu- 

 tions of the globe. We have already seen, that extensive 

 deposits of coal, of liituminous wood, and of overturned 

 trees, are extended indiscriminately under the surface of 

 continents and seas. This vegetable wreck must belong 

 to several catastroplies. to repeated devastations of the 

 solid land, 



Mppearaiicc of the Sun in the Polar Regions. 



* The extreme abundance of floating wood, whicli is 

 brought by the sea to the shores of Labrador and Green- 

 land, and" especially to those of Iceland, and the Arctic 

 lands situated between these two islands, forms another 

 curiosity, that deserves to arrest our attention among these 

 polar regions. We are assured that the masses of floating 

 wood tiirown by the sea upon the island of John de 

 Mayen, often equal the whole of this island in extent. 

 There are some years, when the Icelanders collect suffi- 

 cient to serve them for fuel. The bays of Spitzbergen 

 are filled with it, and it accumulates upon those parts of 

 the coasts of Siberia tliat are exposed to the east, and con- 

 sists of trunks of larch trees, pines, Siberian cedars, firs, 

 and Pernambuco, and Campeachy woods. These trunks 

 appear to have been swept away by the great rivers of 

 Asia and America. Some of them are brought from tlie 



