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The Greenland, or Polar Ice

Cowper.

Scott.

THE following account of the Greenland, or Polar Ice, is abridged by the Editor of this work from a paper, by W.

Scoresby, jun. M. W. S. published in The Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural-History Society :- "Greenland is a country where every object is strikingly singular, or highly magnificent. The atmosphere, the land, and the ocean, each exhibit remarkable or sublime appear ances. "With regard to the atmosphere, several peculiarities may be noticed, viz. its darkness of colour, and density; its frequent production of crystallized snow in a wonderful perfection and variety of form and texture; and its astonishingly sudden changes from calm to storm, from fair weather to foul, and vice versa. "The land is of itself a sublime object; its stupendous mountains rising by steep acclivities from the very margin of the ocean to an immense height, terminating in rigid, conical, or pyramidical summits; its surface, contrasting its native protruding dark-coloured rocks, with its burden of purest snow;-the whole viewed, under the density of a gloomy sky, forms a picture impressive and grand. "Of the inanimate productions of Greenland, none perhaps excites so much interest and astonishment in a stranger, as the ice, in its great abundance and variety. The stupendous masses known by the name of Ice Islands, Floating Mountains, or Icebergs, common to Davis' Straits, and sometimes met with here, from their height, various forms, and the depth of water in which they ground, are calculated to strike the beholder with wonder: yet the fields of ice, more peculiar to Greenland, are not less astonishing. Their deficiency in elevation is sufficiently compensated by their amazing extent of surface. Some of them have been observed near 100 miles in length, and more than half that breadth; each consisting of a single sheet of ice, having its surface raised in general four or six feet above the level of the water, and its base depressed to the depth of nearly twenty feet beneath.

The various kinds of Ice described. -" The ice in general is designated by a variety of appellations, distinguishing it according to the size or number of pieces, their form of aggregation, thickness, transparency, &c. I perhaps cannot better explain the terms in common acceptation amongst the whalefishers, than by marking the disruption of a field. The thickest and strongest field cannot resist the power of a heavy swell; indeed, such are much less capable of bending without being dissevered, than the thinner ice, which is more pliable When a field, by the set of the current, drives to the southward, and, being deserted by the loose ice, becomes exposed to the effects of a ground swell, it presently breaks into a great many pieces, few of which will exceed forty or fifty yards in diameter. Now, such a number of these pieces collected together in close contact, so that they cannot, from the top of the ship's mast, be seen over, are termed a pack