224 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES.' 
first nip would settle the poor little schooner’s busi» 
ness for ever. At the same time, it was quite possible 
that any progress we succeeded in making, instead 
of tending towards her liberation, might perhaps be 
only getting her deeper into the scrape. One thing was 
very certain,—Northing or Southing might be an even 
chance, but whatever Hasting we could make must be to 
the good; so I determined to choose whichever vein 
seemed to have most Easterly direction in it. Two or 
three openings of this sort from time to time presented 
themselves; but in every case, after following them a 
certain distance, they proved to be but cul-cle-sacs , and 
we had to return discomfited. My great hope was in 
a change of wind. It was already blowing very fresh 
frequently acquire a rotary motion, whereby their circumference 
attains a velocity of several miles an hour; and it is scarcely possible 
to conceive the consequences produced by a body, exceeding ten 
thousand million tons in weight, coming in contact with another 
under such circumstances. The strongest ship is but an insignificant 
impediment between two fields in motion. Numbers of whale 
vessels have thus been destroyed; some have been thrown upon the 
ice; some have had their hulls completely torn open, or divided in 
two, and others , have been overrun by the ice, and buried beneath its 
heaped fragments. 
