240 
VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
1820. o’clock, the piece of a floe, which came near us in the afternoon, and which 
had since drifted back a few hundred yards to the eastward, received the 
pressure of the whole body of ice, as it came in. It split across in various 
directions, with a considerable crash, and presently after we saw a part, 
several hundred tons in weight, raised slowly and majestically, as if by the 
application of a screw, and deposited on another part of the floe from which 
it had broken, presenting towards us the surface that had split, which was of 
a fine blue colour, and very solid and transparent. The violence with which 
the ice was coming in being thus broken, it remained quiet during the 
night, which was calm, with a heavy fall of snow. 
Thur. 10. The mass of ice which had been lifted up the preceding day, being drifted 
close to us on the morning of the 10th, I sent Lieutenant Beechey to measure 
its thickness, which proved to be forty-two feet ; and, as it was a piece of a 
regular floe, this measurement may serve to give some idea of the general thick- 
ness of the ice in this neighbourhood. There were some, however, which were 
of much larger dimensions ; an immense floe which formed the principal, or 
at least the nearest, obstruction to the westward, was covered with large 
hummocks, giving to its upper surface the appearance of hill and dale, some- 
what in this manner: 
The thickness of this floe at its nearest edge was six or seven feet above the 
sea, and as about six-sevenths are usually immersed, the whole thickness 
would appear, in the common way of reckoning it, to have been from forty 
to fifty feet, which corresponds with that actually measured by Lieutenant 
Beechey. But the hummocks were many of them at least from fifteen to 
twenty-five feet above the sea; so that the solidity and thickness of this 
enormous floe must have been infinitely greater than any thing we had seen 
before. It was the opinion of Lieutenant Beechey, and of Messrs. Allison 
and Fife, that it very much resembled the ice met with at Spitzbergen ; 
but, according to the account of the two latter, was much heavier than 
any which they had seen there : Lieutenant Beechey considered that 
there was much more snow upon the surface of the Spitzbergen ice. It 
is here of some importance to notice, that the “ loose ice” in this neigh- 
bourhood was on the same increased scale as the floes, so that the danger 
