134 
A VOYAGE TO SPITZBEBGEN. 
strive all we can to make the best of it, and secure* 
our vessel to a bit of ice, whose two projecting; 
tongues keep off the pressure for the present. 
Nature now wears an aspect, “ such as the painter 
might imagine, or the poet, with his lying licence,, 
might invent, or the imagination of a sleeper could 
fancy in dreams of night/' It is our first expe¬ 
rience of being “ beset in the ice," we go into our 
cabin with the vague impression that at any moment 
we may be crushed, to death; and before going to- 
sleep, we note that the thermometer is very low 
that the water is perfectly calm outside; there is 
a stiff breeze blowing from the south—everything 
indicates a gale beyond the ice—but at this distance 
from the unfrozen open water, the wind is mode¬ 
rated by the wonderful effect of the icefields on the* 
atmosphere above, the moist particles borne along; 
by the gale become condensed as they float over 
the ice from its edge, and the barometer i& 
depressed accordingly, clearly showing the disturbed 
state of the atmosphere outside. The storm of wind 
is mellowed with us into a gentle breeze by the same 
agency, and it is quite possible that the wind at a little 
distance in the opposite direction is blowing steadily 
from the north, and possibly along the edge of the- 
ice to the southward, and hence it may be only local 
