GET CLEAU OF THE ICE. 
340 
It is not easy for a person, unacquainted with 
the navigation of the polar seas, to judge of the 
perpetual anxiety that the commander of a ship 
suffers, while involved among the crowded, ex¬ 
tensive, and dangerous ices with which these re¬ 
gions abound. Among drift-ice, whenever the 
wind is high, ships are liable to receive blows that 
might be destructive: and, among fields and floes, 
when the weather is thick, so that the dangers of 
the navigation cannot always be discerned before 
it is too late, they are exposed to the closing of 
these irresistible masses of ice upon them, which 
are capable of crushing them in pieces in a mo¬ 
ment. Ships undcr-way are almost perpetually 
exposed to one or other of these dangers: nor are 
ships moored to the ice by any means in safety, 
as our experience this voyage too powerfully de¬ 
monstrated. Where floes abound, they are al¬ 
most continually revolving and driving about in 
various directions, and frequently coming into mu¬ 
tual contact, with tremendous concussions. Dif¬ 
ferent causes operate in bringing separate masses 
into contact, the combined influence of which, is 
often altogether incalculable. Thus, superficial 
currents, which are not uncommon, operate more 
powerfully upon light ice than upon heavy ice, so 
as to carry the former with greater velocity than 
the latter. The wind also, which acts upon all 
