THE ICE-BELT. 
177 
studied the same formations in Wellington Channel, 
where, previously to the present voyage, they might 
have been supposed to reach their greatest development. 
But this wonderful structure has here assumed a form 
which none of its lesser growths to the south had ex¬ 
hibited. As a physical feature, it may be regarded as 
hardly second, either in importance or prominence, to 
the glacier; and as an agent of geological change, it is 
in the highest degree interesting and instructive. 
Although subject to occasional disruption, and to 
loss of volume from evaporation and thaws, it measures 
the severity of the year by its rates of increase. Ris¬ 
ing with the first freezings of the late summer, it crusts 
the sea-line with curious fretwork and arabesques: a 
little later, and it receives the rude shock of the drifts, 
and the collision of falling rocks from the cliffs which 
margin it: before the early winter has darkened, it is 
a wall, resisting the grinding floes; and it goes on 
gathering increase and strength from the successive 
freezing of the tides, until the melted snows and water- 
torrents of summer for a time check its progress. 
During our first winter at Rensselaer Harbor, the ice- 
belt grew to three times the size which it had upon 
our arrival; and, by the middle of March, the islands 
and adjacent shores were hemmed in by an investing 
plane of nearly thirty feet high (27 feet) and one hun¬ 
dred and twenty wide. 
The ice-foot at this season was not, however, an un¬ 
broken level. It had, like the floes, its barricades, ser¬ 
ried and irregular; which it was a work of great labor 
Vol. i.—12 
