52 
THE MIDDLE ICE. 
we first fell in with the ice. It was off Haroe Island, 
and consisted probably of a tongue or process from 
the main pack I have jnst described. Such interrup- 
tions are not uncommon earlier in the season, and the 
whalers sometimes avoid them by passing to the in- 
ner or inshore side of the island. We learned after- 
ward to regard such ice as hardly worthy of note ; but 
as this was the first time we had met it, I have thought 
it best to quote literally from my journal. 
" Jw/y 1. This morning was called on deck at 4 A.M. 
by our commander. 
"About two hundred yards to the windward, form- 
ing a lee-shore, was a vast plane of undulating ice, in 
nowise differing from that which we see in the Dela- 
ware when mid-winter is contending with the ice- 
boats. There was the same crackling, and grinding, 
and splashing, but the indefinite extent — an ocean in- 
stead of a river — multiplied it to a din unspeakable ; 
and with it came a strange undertone accompaniment, 
a not discordant drone. This was the floe ice ; per- 
haps a tongue from the ' Grreat Pack,' through which 
we are now every day expecting to force our way. A 
great number of bergs, of shapes the most simple and 
most complicated, of colors blue, white, and earth- 
stained, were tangled in this floating field. Such, 
however, was the inertia of the huge masses, that the 
sheet ice piled itself up about them as on fixed rocks. 
The sea immediately around, saving the ground- 
swell, was smooth as a mill-pond ; but it was studded 
over with dark, protruding little globules, about the 
size of hens' eggs, producing an effect like the dimples 
of so many overgrown rain-drops fallen on the water. 
These, as I afterward found, were rounded fragments 
of transparent and fresh-water ice, the debris and de- 
