GREENLAND Ott POLAR ICE. 279 



tion is mutual : pieces of huge dimensions and 

 weight, are not unfrequently piled upon the top, 

 to the height of twenty or thirty feet, whilst 

 doubtless a proportionate quantity is depressed 

 beneath. The view of those stupendous effects 

 in safety y exhibits a picture sublimely grand ; but 

 where there is danger of being overwhelmed, 

 terror and dismay must be the predominant feel- 

 ings. The whale- fishers at all times require un- 

 remitting vigilance to secure their safety, but 

 scarcely in any situation, so much, as when naviga- 

 ting amidst those fields : in foggy weather, they 

 are particularly dangerous, as their motions cannot 

 then be distinctly observed. It may easily be 

 imagined, that the strongest ship can no more 

 withstand the shock of the contact of two fields, 

 than a sheet of paper can stop a musket- bail. 

 Numbers of vessels, since the establishment of the 

 fishery, have been thus destroyed ; some have 

 been thrown upon the ice, some have had their 

 hulls completely torn open, and others have been 

 buried beneath the heaped fragments of the 

 ice. 



In the year 1 804, I had a good opportunity of 

 witnessing the effects produced by the lesser masses 

 in motion. Passing between two fields of bay- 

 ice, about a foot in thickness, they were observed 

 rapidly to approach each other, and before our 

 ship could pass the strait, they met with a veloci- 

 ty of three or four miles per hour : the one over* 



T ^ 



