THE CALVES. 
401 
had no doubt increased the plasticity of the material. 
Imagine, then, this apparently solid surface, by long 
association as unyielding to us as the shore, taking 
suddenly upon itself the functions of fluidity, another 
condition of matter. It absolutely produced some- 
thing like the nausea of sea-sickness to see the swell 
of the ice, rising, and falling, and bending, transmit- 
ting with pliant facility the advancing wave. 
A hummock hill, about midway between us and 
the Rescue, gave me an opportunity of measuring 
rudely the height of the swell. It rose till it covered 
her quarter boat; sinking again till I could see the 
side of the brig down to her water-line, an interval 
of five feet at least, 
“ As we walk along the edge of the open fissures, 
we see a wonderful variety in the thickness of the 
ice. Our apparently level surface is, in fact, a mo- 
saic work of ices, frozen at separate periods, and tes- 
selated by the several changes or disruptions which 
we have undergone. Thus I can see the tables un- 
der our stern extending down at least twenty-five 
feet: adjoining this is ice of four feet: next comes a 
field of six feet; and then hummock ridges, with ta- 
bles choked below, so as to give an apparent depth 
of twenty. 
“ The ‘ calves ’ also, of which a great many have 
now risen to the surface, are worthy of note. These 
singular masses are evidently fragments of tables, of 
every degree of thickness, which have been forced 
down by pressure, and afterward, by some change in 
the temperature of the water, or by wave and tidal 
actions, have been liberated again from the floe, and 
find their way upward wherever an opening permits. 
We saw them honey-combed and cellular, water-sod- 
C c 
