466 A DRIFTING ICE-BEACH. 
"About one o'clock to-day, a fragment about as 
large as Independence Hall fell from it into the ice- 
sea below. The noise had not the usual sharp, reverb- 
erating character of these disruptions ; but the effects 
of the avalanche upon the field into which it fell were 
very striking. At first, from the centre of turmoil 
came a circling series of large undulations clothed in 
foam. Next the floating rubbish began to roll in prop- 
agated waves ; and these, passing our brig, extended 
themselves under the margin of the fast floe, breaking 
it up, and still expanding in one ridge beyond another 
till they disappeared in the distance. We counted at 
least five wave circles in the ice-field at one time. It 
^ reminded me of our scene in the pack on the fifth of 
June. 
''August 15, Friday. The floe we have been fasten- 
ed to so long still holds together, though traversed by 
innumerable cracks. The margin is constantly break- 
ing away ; but our whale lines are laid far out, and as 
one comes away we warp closer in by the others. 
" This has kept us from drifting, but it has sur- 
rounded us with the off'-shed fragments of the floes. 
These are already reoemented about us, though con- 
stantly cracking and breaking away by the varying 
pressures; and outside of them the loose floes are drift- 
ing by, morning, noon, and night, like the foam-cov- 
ered surface of a millrace when the ice gives way in 
a spring freshet. We may be said to be moored to 
an uncertain shore, a drifting beach of ice ; while on 
every side, striving to tear us from this faithless anch- 
orage, are the unquiet, grinding floes. But the bergs ! 
it seems almost profanity to speak of them: where are 
they ? 
" I have compared the outside drift to the foam of 
