40 
BARENTZ'S EXPEDITION. 
his ship from being wrecked, he was obliged to make her fast 
to an enormous iceberg, which from its gigantic bulk, and 
apparently resting on the bottom of the sea, he flattered himself 
would prove a protection against the heavy gales, which came 
rushing on him from the eastward. 
This circumstance, however, is sufficient to illustrate the igno¬ 
rance which prevailed at that time, relative to the nature of 
these vast accumulations of ice, or Barentz in the midst of 
summer, would not have ventured to make fast his' ship to one of 
them, as instead of being his protector, it might prove the 
immediate instrument of his destruction. The ship had not been 
twelve hours lashed to the iceberg, when with a violent explosion 
it burst asunder, breaking into innumerable fragments, and that 
which appeared the previous moment to be a fixed and durable 
mass, towering to the skies, was as it were the next moment 
sunk in the ocean, and scarcely a vestige of its being left, with 
the exception of some solitary floating masses, which, dashing 
against each other by the fury of the waves, were splintered into 
a thousand pieces. 
Exposed now to the most imminent danger, Barentz saw 
himself obliged to return, and after encountering the greatest 
hardships, he reached Icehaven in latitude 73° 50'. He had 
profited very little by the experience of the English navigators, 
who had preceded him in their attempts to explore th.e Arctic 
Regions, and he consequently committed the fatal error of seeking 
an inland harbour, instead of keeping as much as possible to the 
open sea, where in proportion to its depth the danger is less, 
of being imbedded in the ice. On reaching Icehaven, the ice 
against which they had been for some time contending, closed 
in upon them, without the slightest chance of extricating 
themselves. 
The ship had not been victualled, nor otherways prepared for 
such an unexpected occurrence ; and the crew, which now con¬ 
sisted of only seventeen persons, saw before them the dreadful 
prospect of passing the winter in this inhospitable spot, with a 
scanty supply of provisions, and utterly unprovided with any of 
those necessaries, which were requisite to protect them from the 
