102 
MELVILLE BAY. 
tumultuous marg-in. Before we had bored into it more 
than ten yards, we were on the edge of a nearly sub- 
merged iceberg, which, not being large enough to re- 
sist the swell, rolled fearfully. The sea dashed in an 
angry surf over its inclined sides, rattling the icy frag- 
ments or " brash" against its irregular surface. Our 
position reminded me of the scenes so well described 
by Beechy in the voyage of the Dorothea and Trent. 
For a time we were awkwardly placed, but we bored 
through ; and the Rescue, after skirting the same ob- 
struction, managed also to get through without damage. 
We continued to run along wdth our top-sail yard 
on the cap, but the growing fog made it impossible to 
keep on our course very long. After several encoun- 
ters with the floating hummocks, we succeeded in ty- 
ing fast to a heavy floe, which seemed to be connected 
with the land, and were thus moored within that mys^ 
terious circuit known as Melville Bay. 
It is during the transit of this bay that most of 
the catastrophes occur which have made the statistics 
of the whalers so fearful. It was here, about twenty 
miles to the south of us, that in one year more than 
one thousand human beings were cast shelterless upon 
the ice, their ships ground up before their eyes. It is 
rarely that a season goes by in which the passage is 
attempted without disaster. 
The inshore side of the indentation is lined by a 
sweep of glacier, through which here and there the 
dark headlands of the coast force themselves with se- 
vere contrast. Outside of this, the shore, if we can 
call it such, is again lined with a heavy ledge of 
ground ice, thicker and more permanent than that in 
motion. This extends out for miles, forming an icy 
margin or beach, known technically as the " land ice," 
