118 
VOYAGE TO GREENLAND. 
the spiculae darting with considerable velocity on 
the surface of the water, in all the pleasing variety 
of congelation. This excited my particular atten- 
tion from its occurring in a space, that half an 
hour before, had been covered by ice, when the 
contiguous water was perfectly open. The opera- 
tion here evident, combined with many other proofs 
I had witnessed to convince me of the fact that sea- 
water does freeze, a circumstance that has been 
doubted. After a navigation of inconceivable in- 
terest, we came by a small inlet into a considerable 
space of water, surrounded by a field, floes, and seal 
meadows of ice ; where we lay to, not being able 
to proceed further to the westward in the course 
which we had been pursuing. 
We moored the ship to a large floe of 
distant, and of an extent just 
to render visible two ships on the opposite side ; 
here the crew were employed in getting fresh water 
from pools that had been formed by the melting of 
the snow on the surface of the ice. Three whales 
were seen, and boats sent after them, but as the fog 
was dense, and the fish did not re-appear, the boats 
returned. The usual effects of a calm followed, and 
brought some of those extreme dangers attendant 
on the navigation of these seas, by the separation 
of large bodies of ice at such times. W e were thus 
kept in constant watchfulness, not from imaginary 
apprehensions, but from the warning of many heavy 
and extensive pieces, being observed through the 
mist to threaten to beset us, if not to prove our 
