Those masses of ice which, towering to a considerable elevation above the surface of the water, are carried hither and thither by the currents of the Polar Sea, are known as Icebergs. They are fresh-water formations, originating in the great glaciers of the northern highlands. For as the rivers continuously pour their waters into the ocean, so do the glaciers incessantly glide downward from the head of the valleys which they occupy, until, arriving on the coast, they throw off their terminal projections, to be carried afar by the action of the tidal waves.

These bergs, or floating mountains, are sometimes 250 to 300 feet above the level of the sea, and their capacity or bulk is invariably equal to their height. From their specific gravity it has been calculated that the volume of an iceberg below the water is eight times that of the portion rising above it. They are frequently of the most imposing magnitude. Ross, in his first expedition, fell in with one in Baffin Bay, at a distance of seven leagues from land, which had gone aground in sixty-one fathoms water. Its dimensions, according to Lieutenant Parry, were 4,169 yards in length, 3,869 yards in breadth, and 51 feet in height. Its configuration is described as resembling that of the back of the Isle of Wight, while its cliffs recalled those chalky ramparts which stretch their glittering line to the west of Dover. Its weight was computed at 1,292,397,673 tons. Captain Graab examined a mass, on the west coast of Greenland, which rose 120 feet out of the water, measured 4,000 feet in circumference at the base, and was calculated to be equal in bulk to upwards of 900,000,000 cubic feet. Dr. Hayes took the measurements of a berg which had stranded off the little harbour of Tessuissak, to the north of Melville Bay. The square wall which faced towards his base of triangulation was somewhat more than three-quarters of a mile in length, and 315 feet in height. As it was nearly square-sided above the sea, it would be of the same shape beneath it; and, according to the ratio already given, must have drifted aground in a depth of fully half a mile. In other words, from base to summit it must have stood as high as the peak of Snowdon. Its cubical contents cannot have been less than about 27,000,000,000 feet, nor its weight than 2,000,000,000 tons!

When seen from a distance, the spectacle of any considerable number of these slowly-moving mountains is very impressive, and it becomes particularly magnificent if it should be lit up by the splendour of the midnight sun. They are not only majestic in size, but sublime in appearance, at one time assuming the likeness of a grand cathedral church, at another, of a lofty obelisk; now of a dazzling pyramid, and now of a cluster of lofty towers. Nature would seem to have lavished upon them all her architectural fancy; and as they are grandly swept along, one might be pardoned for supposing them to be the sea-washed palaces of a race of ocean Titans.

In Melville Bay, Dr. Kane’s ship anchored to an iceberg, which protected it from the fury of a violent gale. But he had not long enjoyed the tranquil shelter it afforded, when a din of loud crackling sounds was heard above; and small fragments of ice, not larger than a walnut, began to dot the water, like the first big drops of a thunder-shower. Dr. Kane and his crew did not neglect these indications; they had barely time to cast off, however, before the face of the icy cliff fell in ruins, crashing like near artillery.

Afterwards he made fast to a larger berg, which he describes as a moving breakwater, and of gigantic proportions; it kept its course steadily towards the north.

When he got under weigh, and made for the north-east, through a labyrinth of ice-floes, he was favoured with a gorgeous spectacle, which hardly any excitement of peril could have induced him to overlook. The midnight sun came out over the northern crest of the huge berg, kindling variously-coloured fires on every part of its surface, and making the ice around one sublime transparency of illuminated gem-work, blazing carbuncles, and rubies and molten gold.

Dr. Hayes describes an immense berg which resembled in its general aspect the Westminster Palace of Sir Charles Barry’s creation. It went to ruin before his eyes. First one tall tower tumbled headlong into the water, starting from its surface an innumerable swarm of gulls; then another followed; and at length, after five hours of terrible disruption and crashing, not a fragment that rose fifty feet above the water remained of this architectural colossus of ice.

These floating isles of ice are carried southward fully two thousand miles from their parent glaciers to melt in the Atlantic, where they communicate a perceptible coldness to the water for thirty or forty miles around, while their influence on the atmospheric temperature may be recognized at a greater distance. Their number is extraordinary. As many as seven hundred bergs, each loftier than the dome of St. Paul’s, some than the cross of St. Peter’s, have been seen at once in the Polar basin; as if the Frost King had despatched an armada to oppose the rash enterprise of man in penetrating within his dominions. The waves break against them as against an iron-bound coast, and often the spray is flung over their very summits, like the spray of the rolling waters of the Channel over the crest of the Eddystone Lighthouse. The ice crumbles from their face, and tumbles down into the sea with a roar like that of artillery; and as they waste away, through the combined action of air and water, they occasionally lose their equilibrium and topple over, producing a swell and a violent commotion which break up the neighbouring ice-fields: the tumult spreads far and wide, and thunder seems to peal around.

The fractures or rents frequently visible in the glittering cliffs of the icebergs are of an emerald green, and look like patches of beautiful fresh sward on cliffs of chalk; while pools of water of the most exquisite sapphirine blue shine resplendent on their surface, or leap down their craggy sides in luminous cascades. Even in the night they are readily distinguished from afar by their effulgence; and in foggy, hazy weather, by a peculiar blackness in the atmosphere. As the Greenland Current frequently drifts them to the south of Newfoundland, and even to the 40th or 39th parallel of latitude, the ships and steamers crossing between Europe and America sometimes meet them on their track. To come into collision with them is certain destruction; and it is probable that some of those ill-fated vessels which have left their harbours in safety, but have never since been heard of,—as, for example, the steamer President,—have perished through this cause.

But if they are sometimes dangerous to the mariner, they often prove his security. As most of their bulk lies below the water-surface, they are either carried along by under-currents against the wind, or else from their colossal size they are able to defy the strongest gale, and to move along with majestic slowness when every other kind of ice is driven swiftly past them. And hence it happens that, when the wind is contrary, the whaler is glad to bring his ship into smooth water under their lee. In describing the difficulties of his passage through the loose and drifting ice near Cape York, and the broken ice-fields, Dr. Kane records the assistance he derived from the large icebergs, to which he moored his vessel, and thus was enabled, he says, to hold his own, however rapidly the surface-floes were passing by him to the south.

Yet anchoring to a berg brings with it an occasional peril. As we have already said, large pieces frequently loosen themselves from the summit or sides, and fall into the sea with a far-resounding crash. When this operation, “calving,” as it is called, takes place, woe to the unfortunate ship which lies beneath!

All ice becomes excessively brittle under the influence of the sun or of a temperate atmosphere, and a single blow from an axe will suffice to split a huge berg asunder, burying the heedless adventurer beneath the ruins, or hurling him into the yawning chasm.

Dr. Scoresby records the adventure of two sailors who had been sent to attach an anchor to a berg. They set to work to hew a hole in the ice, but scarcely had the first blow been struck, when the colossal mass rent from top to bottom and fell asunder, the two halves falling in opposite directions with a tremendous uproar. One of the sailors, with remarkable presence of mind, instantly clambered up the huge fragment on which he was sitting, and remained rocking to and fro on the dizzy summit until its equilibrium was restored; the other, falling between the masses, would probably have been crushed to death if the current caused by their commotion had not swept him within reach of the boat that was waiting for them.

Fastening to a berg, says Sherard Osborn, has its risks and dangers. Sometimes the first stroke of the man setting the ice-anchor, by its concussion, causes the iceberg to break up, and the people so employed run great risk of being injured; at another time, vessels obliged to make fast under the steep side of a berg have been seriously damaged by pieces detaching themselves from overhead; and, again, the projecting masses, called tongues, which form under water the base of the berg, have been known to break off, and strike a vessel so severely as to sink her. All these perils are duly detailed by every Arctic navigator, who is always mindful, in mooring to an iceberg, to look for a side which is low and sloping, without any tongues under water.

Captain Parry was once witness of that sublime spectacle, which, though of frequent occurrence, is seldom seen by human eyes, the entire dissolution of an enormous iceberg.

Its huge size and massiveness had been specially remarked, and men thought that it might well resist “a century of sun and thaw.” It looked as large as Westminster Abbey. All on board Captain Parry’s ship described as a most wonderful spectacle this iceberg, without any warning, completely breaking up. The sea around it became a seething caldron, from the violent plunging of the masses, as they broke and re-broke in a thousand pieces. The floes, torn up for a distance of two miles around it, by the violent action of the rolling waters, threatened, from the agitation of the ice, to destroy any vessel that had been amongst them; and Captain Parry and his crew congratulated themselves that they were sufficiently far from the scene to witness its sublimity without being involved in its danger.

Icebergs chiefly abound in Baffin Bay, and in the gulfs and inlets connected with it. They are particularly numerous in the great indentation known as Melville Bay, the whole interior of the country bordering upon it being the seat of immense glaciers, and these are constantly “shedding off” icebergs of the largest dimensions. The greater bulk of these is, as we have explained, below the water-line; and the consequent depth to which they sink when floating subjects them to the action of the deeper ocean-currents, while their broad surface above the water is, of course, acted on by the wind. It happens, therefore, as Dr. Kane remarks, that they are found not infrequently moving in different directions from the floes around them, and preventing them for a time from freezing into a united mass. Still, in the late winter, when the cold has thoroughly set in, Melville Bay becomes a continuous mass of ice, from Cape York to the Devil’s Thumb. At other times, this region justifies the name the whalers have bestowed upon it of “Bergy Hole.”

Captain Beechey, in his voyage with Buchan, in 1818, had an opportunity of witnessing the formation of a “berg,” or rather of two of these immense masses. In Magdalena Bay he had taken the ship’s launch near the shore to examine a magnificent glacier, when the discharge of a gun caused an instantaneous disruption of its bulk. A noise resembling thunder was heard in the direction of the glacier, and in a few seconds more an immense piece broke away, and fell headlong into the sea. The crew of the launch, supposing themselves beyond the reach of its influence, quietly looked upon the scene, when a sea arose and rolled towards the shore with such rapidity that the boat was washed upon the beach and filled. As soon as their astonishment had subsided, they examined the boat, and found her so badly stove that it was necessary to repair her before they could return to their ship. They had also the curiosity to measure the distance the boat had been carried by the wave, and ascertained that it was ninety-six feet.

A short time afterwards, when Captain Beechey and Lieutenant Franklin had approached one of these stupendous walls of ice, and were endeavouring to search into the innermost recess of a deep cavern that lay near the foot of the glacier, they suddenly heard a report, as of a cannon, and turning to the quarter whence it proceeded, perceived an immense section of the front of the glacier sliding down from the height of two hundred feet at least into the sea, and dispersing the water in every direction, accompanied by a loud grinding noise, and followed by an outflow of water, which, being previously lodged in the fissures, now made its escape in innumerable tiny flashing rills and cataracts.

The mass thus disengaged at first disappeared wholly under water, and nothing could be seen but a violent seething of the sea, and the ascent of clouds of glittering spray, such as that which occurs at the foot of a great waterfall. But after a short time it reappeared, raising its head fully a hundred feet above the surface, with water streaming down on every side; and then labouring, as if doubtful which way it should fall, it rolled over, rocked to and fro for a few minutes, and finally became settled.

On approaching and measuring it, Beechey found it to be nearly a quarter of a mile in circumference, and sixty feet out of the water. Knowing its specific gravity, and making a fair allowance for its inequalities, he computed its weight at 421,660 tons.

In Parry’s first voyage he passed in one day fifty icebergs of large dimensions, just after crossing the Arctic Circle; and on the following day a still more extended chain of ice-peaks of still larger size, against which a heavy southerly swell was violently driven, dashing the loose ice with tremendous force, sometimes flinging a white spray over them to the height of more than one hundred feet, and accompanied by a loud noise “exactly resembling the roar of distant thunder.”

Between one of these bergs and a detached floe the Hecla, Parry’s ship, had nearly, as the whalers say, been “nipped,” or crushed. The berg was about one hundred and forty feet high, and aground in one hundred and twenty fathoms, so that its whole height must have exceeded eight hundred feet; that is, it was of a bulk equal to St. Catherine’s Down in the Isle of Wight.

In his second voyage Parry speaks of fifty-four icebergs visible at one time, some of which were not less than two hundred feet above the sea; and again of thirty of these huge masses, many of them whirled about by the tides like straws on a mill-stream.

Icebergs can originate only in regions where glaciers abound: the former are the offspring of the latter, and where land unsuitable to the production of the latter does not exist, the former are never found. Hence, in Baffin Bay, where steep cliffs of cold granite frown over almost fathomless waters, the “monarch of glacial formations” floats slowly from the ravine which has been its birthplace, until fairly launched into the depths of ocean, and, “after long years,” drifts into the warmer regions of the Atlantic to assist in the preservation of Nature’s laws of equilibrium of temperature of the air and water.

There was a time when men of science, and, amongst others, the French philosopher St. Pierre, believed that icebergs were the snow and ice of ages accumulated upon an Arctic sea, which, forming at the Poles, detached themselves from the parent mass. Such an hypothesis naturally gave rise to many theories, not less ingenious than startling, as to the effect an incessant accumulation of ice must produce on the globe itself; and St. Pierre hinted at the possibility of the huge “domes of ice”—which, as he supposed, rose to an immense height in the keen frosty heavens of the Poles—suddenly launching towards the Equator, dissolving under a tropical sun, and resulting in a second deluge!

In simple language Professor Tyndall furnishes an explanation of the origin of icebergs, which we may transfer to these pages as supplementary to the preceding remarks.

What is their origin? he asks; and he replies, as we have done, the Arctic glaciers. From the mountains in the interior the indurated snows slide into the valleys, and fill them with ice. The glaciers thus created move, like the Swiss ones, incessantly downward. But the Arctic glaciers descend to the sea, and even enter it, frequently ploughing up its bottom into submarine moraines. Undermined by the continuous action of the waves, and unable to resist the pressure of their own weight, they break across, and discharge enormous masses into the ocean. Some of these drift on the adjacent shores, and often maintain themselves for years. Others float away to the southward, and pass into the broad Atlantic, where they are finally dissolved. But a vast amount of heat is demanded for the simple liquefaction of ice, and the melting of icebergs is on this account so slow that, when large, they sometimes maintain themselves till they have been drifted two thousand miles from their place of birth.

Icebergs, then, are fresh-water formations, and though they are found on a colossal scale only in the Polar seas, yet they are by no means uncommon among the lofty Alpine lakes.

The monarch of European ice-rivers is the great Aletsch glacier, at the head of the valley of the Rhone. It is about twenty miles in length, and collects its materials from the snow-drifts of the grandest mountains of the Bernese Oberland—the Jungfrau, the Mönch, the Trugberg, the Aletschhorn, the Breithorn, and the Gletscherhorn.

From the peak of the Æggischhorn the Alpine traveller obtains a fine view of its river-like course, and he sees beneath him, on the right hand, and surrounded by sheltering mountains, an object of almost startling beauty. “Yonder,” says Tyndall,[6] “we see the naked side of the glacier, exposing glistening ice-cliffs sixty or seventy feet high. It would seem as if the Aletsch here were engaged in the vain attempt to thrust an arm through a lateral valley. It once did so; but the arm is now incessantly broken off close to the body of the glacier, a great space formerly covered by the ice being occupied by its water of liquefaction. In this way a lake of the loveliest blue is formed, which reaches quite to the base of the ice-cliffs, saps them, as the Arctic waves sap the Greenland glaciers, and receives from them the broken masses which it has undermined. As we look down upon the lake, small icebergs sail over the tranquil surface, each resembling a snowy swan accompanied by its shadow.”

This lake is the Märjelen Sea of the Swiss.

Professor Tyndall goes on to describe a spectacle which he witnessed, and which, as we have seen, is of frequent occurrence in the Arctic Seas. A large and lonely iceberg was floating in the middle of the lake. Suddenly he heard a sound like that of a cataract, and on looking towards the iceberg could see the water teeming from its sides. Whence came the water? The berg had become top-heavy through the melting underneath; it was in the act of performing a somersault, and in rolling over carried with it a vast quantity of water, which rushed like a waterfall down its sides. And the iceberg, which, but a moment before, was snowy white, now exhibited the delicate blue colour characteristic of compact ice. It would soon, however, be rendered white again by the action of the sun.

We may contrast this picture of the solitary iceberg in the centre of the dark-blue lake with one which Dr. Hayes describes in his picturesque voyage in the open Polar Sea.

After passing Upernavik he saw a heavy line of icebergs lying across his course, and having no alternative, shot in among them. Some of them proved to be of immense size—upwards of two hundred feet in height, and a mile in length; others were not larger than the schooner which wound her way amongst them. Their forms were as various as their dimensions, from solid wall-sided masses of dead whiteness, with waterfalls tumbling from them, to an old weather-worn accumulation of Gothic spires, whose crystal peaks and sharp angles melted into the blue sky. They seemed to be endless and innumerable, and so close together that at a little distance they appeared to form upon the sea an unbroken canopy of ice.

Dr. Hayes records an adventure which may serve to give the reader an idea of the nature of the perils encountered by the Arctic explorer. The ocean-current was carrying his schooner towards a labyrinth of icebergs at an uncomfortably rapid rate. A boat was therefore lowered, to moor a cable to a berg which lay grounded at about a hundred yards distant. While this was being done the schooner absolutely grazed the side of a berg which rose a hundred feet above her topmasts, and then slipped past another of smaller dimensions. But a strong eddy at this moment carried her against a huge floating mass, and though the shock was slight, it proved sufficient to disengage some fragments of ice large enough to have crushed the vessel had they struck her. The berg then began to revolve, slowly and ponderously, and to settle slowly over the threatened ship, whose destruction seemed a thing of certainty.

Fortunately, she was saved by the action of the berg. An immense mass broke off from that part which lay beneath the water-surface, and this colossal fragment, a dozen times larger than the schooner, came rushing up within a few yards of them, sending a vast volume of foam and water flying from its sides. This rupture arrested the rotatory motion of the berg, which then began to settle in another direction, and the schooner was able to sheer off.

At this moment the crew were startled by a loud report. Another and another followed in quick succession, until the din grew deafening, and the whole air seemed a reservoir of chaotic sounds. The opposite side of the berg had split off, piece after piece, toppling a vast volume of ice into the sea, and sending the berg revolving back upon the ship. Then the side nearest to them underwent the same singular process of disruption, and came plunging wildly down into the sea, sending over them a shower of spray, and raising a swell which rocked the ship to and fro as in a gale of wind, and left her grinding in the débris of the crumbling ruin.

It is impossible, we should say, for any one who has not had actual experience of the conditions of the Arctic world, to comprehend or imagine the immense quantity of ice upborne on its cold bleak waters. The mere enumeration of the floating bergs at times defies the navigator. Dr. Hayes once counted as far as five hundred, and then gave up in despair. Near by they stood out, he says, in all the rugged harshness of their sharp outlines; and from this, softening with the distance, they melted away into the clear gray sky; and there, far off upon the sea of liquid silver, the imagination conjured up the strangest and most wonderful groups and objects. Birds and beasts and human forms and architectural designs took shape in the distant masses of blue and white. The dome of St. Peter’s was recognizable here; then the spire of a village church rose sharp and distinct; and under the shadow of the Pyramids nestled a Byzantine tower and a Grecian temple.

“To the eastward,” says Dr. Hayes, describing a similar scene, “the sea was dotted with little islets—dark specks upon a brilliant surface. Icebergs, great and small, crowded through the channels which divided them, until in the far distance they appeared massed together, terminating against a snow-covered plain that sloped upward until it was lost in a dim line of bluish whiteness. This line could be traced behind the serrated coast as far to the north and south as the eye could carry. It was the great Mer de Glace[7] which covers the length and breadth of the Greenland continent. The snow-covered slope was a glacier descending therefrom—the parent stem from which had been discharged, at irregular intervals, many of the icebergs which troubled us so much.”

We have now brought together a sufficient number of data to assist the reader in forming a vivid conception of those monsters of the Polar Seas, the icebergs; and to enable him, unless he is very slow of imagination, to realize to himself what they are, and what their general aspect is. But we may add one interesting detail, noticed by Mr. Lament, the persevering seal-hunter, which is very generally overlooked.

In the course of the brief Arctic summer the increased solar warmth has a perceptible effect upon the solid ice, and it becomes undermined and honeycombed, or, as the sailors call it, “rotten,” like a chalk cliff. It decays fastest, apparently, “between wind and water,” so that enormous caverns are excavated in the sides of the bergs.

Poets never dreamed of anything more beautiful than these crystal vaults, which sometimes appear of a deep ultramarine blue, and at others of an emerald-green tint. One could fancy them the favourite haunts of mermaids and mermen, and of every kind of sea monster; but, in truth, no animal ever enters them; the water dashing in and out through their icy caves and tunnels makes a sonorous but rather monotonous and melancholy sound. In moderately calm weather many of these excavated bergs assume the form of gigantic mushrooms, and all kinds of fantastic outlines; but as soon as a breeze of wind arises they break up into little pieces with great rapidity.

Icebergs are met with on every side of the Southern Pole, and on every meridian of the great Antarctic Ocean. But such is not the case in the North. In the 360th meridian of longitude which intersects the parallel of 70° N., icebergs spread over an extent only of about fifty-five degrees, and this is immediately in and about Greenland and Baffin Bay. Or, as Admiral Osborn puts it, for 1,375 miles of longitude we have icebergs, and then for 7,635 geographical miles none are met with. This fact is, as the same writer calls it, most interesting, and points strongly to the probability that no extensive area of land exists about the North Pole; a
supposition strengthened by another fact, that the vast ice-fields off Spitzbergen show no signs of ever having been in contact with land or gravel.

Another difficulty which besets the Arctic navigator is the “pack-ice.”

In winter, the ice from the North Pole descends so far south as to render the coast of Newfoundland inaccessible; it envelops Greenland, sometimes even Iceland, and always surrounds and blocks up Spitzbergen and Novaia Zemlaia. But as the sun comes north this vast frozen expanse, which stretches over several thousands of square miles, breaks up into enormous masses. When these extend horizontally for a considerable distance they are called ice-fields. A floe is a detached portion of a field; a large area of floes, closely compact together, is known as pack-ice; while drift-ice is loose ice in motion, and not so firmly welded as to prevent a ship from forcing her way through the yielding fragments.

This “pack-ice,” however, is the great obstacle to Arctic exploration; and frequently it presents a barrier which no human enterprise or skill can overpass. At times, it has been found possible to cut a channel through it, or it breaks up and opens a water-way through which the bold adventurer steers. In 1806, Captain Scoresby forced his ship through two hundred and fifty miles of pack-ice, in imminent peril, until he reached the parallel of 81° 50’,—his nearest approach to the Pole. In 1827, Sir Edward Parry gained the latitude of 82° 45’, by dragging a boat over the ice-fields, but was then compelled to abandon his daring and hazardous attempt, because the current carried the ice southward more rapidly than he could traverse it to the north.

In warm summers this mass of ice will suddenly clear away and leave an open streak of silver sea along the west coast of Spitzbergen, varying in width from sixty to one hundred and fifty miles, and reaching as high as 80° or 80° 30’ N. latitude. It was through this channel that Scoresby bore his ship on the expedition to which we have just alluded. A direct course from the Thames, across the Pole, to Behring Strait is 3,570 geographical miles; by Lancaster Sound it is 4,660 miles. The Russians would be saved a voyage of 18,000 geographical miles could they strike across the Pole and through Behring Strait to British Columbia, instead of going by Cape Horn.

Ice-fields, twenty to thirty miles across, are of frequent occurrence in the great Northern Ocean; sometimes they extend fully one hundred miles, so closely and solidly packed that no opening, even for a boat, intervenes between them; they vary in thickness from ten to forty or even fifty feet. At times these fields, which are many thousand millions of tons in weight, acquire a rapid rotatory motion, and dash against one another with a fury of which no words can give an accurate idea. The reader knows what awful results are produced by the collision of two railway trains, and may succeed, perhaps, in forming some feeble conception of this still more appalling scene when he remembers the huge dimensions and solidity of the opposing forces. The waters seethe and foam, as if lashed by a tremendous tempest; the air is smitten into stillness by the chaos of sounds, the creaking, and rending, and cracking, and heaving, as the two ice-fields are hurled against each other.

Woe to the ship caught between these grinding masses! No vessel ever built by human hands could resist their pressure; and many a whaler, navigating amid the floating fields, especially in foggy weather, has thus been doomed to destruction. Some have been caught up like reeds, and flung helplessly upon the ice; others have been overrun by the ice, and buried beneath the accumulated fragments; others have been dashed to pieces, and have gone down suddenly with all on board.

The records of Arctic exploration are full of stories of “hairbreadth escapes” from the perils of the ice-field and the ice-floe. Here is one which we borrow from the voyage of the Dorothea and the Trent, under Captain Buchan and Lieutenant Franklin.

The two vessels were making for Magdalena Bay, when they were caught in a violent storm, and compelled to heave-to under storm stay-sails. Next morning (June 30) the ice was seen along the lee, with a furious sea breaking upon it. Close-reefed sails were out in the hope of weathering the danger. When Buchan found that this could not be effected by his ship, a slow and heavy sailer, he resolved on the desperate expedient of “taking the pack,” in preference to falling, broadside on, among the roaring breakers and crashing ice. “Heaven help them!” was the involuntary cry of those on board the Trent, and the prayer was all the more earnest from the conviction that a similar fate would soon be their own.

The Dorothea wore, and, impelled by wind and sea, rushed towards what seemed inevitable destruction; those in the Trent held their breath while they watched the perilous exploit. The suspense lasted but a moment, for the vessel, like a snow-flake before the storm, drove into the awful scene of foam, and spray, and broken ice, which formed a wall impenetrable to mortal eyesight. Whether she was lost or saved, the gallant hearts on board the Trent would never know until they too were forced into a manœuvre which appeared like rushing into the jaws of death. But it was inevitable; and when Franklin had made all his preparations, he gave, in firm, decisive tones, the order to “put up the helm.”

No language, says Admiral Beechey, who was then serving as a lieutenant on board the Trent, can convey an adequate idea of the terrific grandeur of the effects produced by the collision of the ice and the tempestuous ocean. No language, on the other hand, can convey an idea of the heroic calmness and resolution of Franklin and his crew. As they approached the terrible scene, Franklin watched for one opening less hazardous than another; but there was none. Before them stretched one long line of frightful breakers, immense blocks of ice heaving, rearing, and hurtling against one another with a din which rendered the loud voice of the gallant commander almost inaudible. On the crest of a huge billow the little Trent rushed into the horrible turmoil; a shock, which quivered through the ship from stem to stern, and the crew were flung upon the deck, and the masts bent like willow wands.

“Hold on, for your lives, and stand to the helm, lads!” shouted Franklin. “Ay, ay, sir,” was the steady response from many a heroic heart. A billow came thundering against the stern of the brig; would the brig be engulfed, or would she drive before it? Happily, she forged ahead, though shaking like a spent race-horse, and with every timber straining and creaking. Now, thrown broadside on, her side was remorselessly battered by the floe pieces; then, tossed by the sea over ice-block after ice-block, she seemed like a plaything in the grasp of an irresistible power. For some hours this severe trial of strength and fortitude endured; then the storm subsided as rapidly as it had arisen, and their gratitude for their own escape was mingled with joy at the safety of the Dorothea, which they could see in the distance, still afloat, and with her crew in safety.

On Captain Parry’s second expedition, in 1822, his ships, the Hecla and the Fury, were placed in a position of scarcely less danger.

Thus we read of the Hecla, which at the time had been made fast by means of cables to the land-ice, that a very heavy and extensive floe caught her on her broadside, and, being backed by another large body of ice, gradually lifted her stern as if by the action of a wedge. The weight every moment increasing, her crew were obliged to veer on the hawsers, whose friction was so great as nearly to cut through the bitt-heads, and ultimately set them on fire, so that it became requisite to pour upon them buckets of water. At length the pressure proved irresistible; the cables snapped; but as the sea was too full of ice to allow the ship to drive, the only way in which she could yield to the enormous burden brought to bear upon her was by leaning over the land-ice, while her stern at the same time was lifted clean out of the water for fully five feet.

Had another floe backed the one which lifted her, the ship must inevitably have rolled broadside over, or been rent in twain. But the pressure which had been so dangerous eventually proved its safety; for, owing to its increasing weight, the floe on which she was carried burst upwards, unable to resist its force. The Hecla then righted, and a small channel opening up amid the driving ice, she was soon got into comparatively smooth water.

On the following day, shortly before noon, a heavy floe, measuring some miles in length, came down towards the Fury, exciting the gravest apprehensions for her safety. In a few minutes it came in contact, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, with a point of the land-ice, breaking it up with a tremendous roar, and forcing numberless immense masses, perhaps many tons in weight, to the height of fifty or sixty feet; whence they again rolled down on the inner or land side, and were quickly succeeded by a fresh supply. While they were compelled to remain passive spectators of this grand but terrific sight, being within five or six hundred yards of the point, the danger they incurred was twofold: first, lest the floe should swing in and serve the ship in the same unceremonious manner; and, secondly, lest its pressure should detach the land-ice to which they were secured, and cast them adrift at the mercy of the tides. Fortunately, neither of these terrible alternatives occurred, the floe remaining stationary for the rest of the tide, and setting off with the ebb when the tide soon afterwards turned.

The reader must not imagine that an ice-field is a smooth and uniform plain, as level as an English meadow; it is, on the contrary, a rugged succession of hollows, and of protuberances called “hummocks,” interspersed with pools of water, and occasionally intersected by deep fissures. In many parts it can be compared only to a promiscuous accumulation of rocks closely packed together, and piled up over the extensive dreary space in great heaps and endless ridges, leaving scarcely a foot of level surface, and compelling the traveller to thread his way as best he can among the perplexing inequalities; sometimes mounting unavoidable obstructions to an elevation of ten, and again more than a hundred feet, above the general level.

The interspaces between these closely accumulated ice-masses are filled up to some extent with drifted snow.

Now, let the reader endeavour to form a definite idea of the scene presented by an ice-field. Let him watch the slow progress of the sledges as they wind through the labyrinth of broken ice-tables, the men and dogs pulling and pushing up their respective loads, as Napoleon’s soldiers may have done when drawing their artillery through the rugged Alpine passes, or Lord Napier’s
heroes when they scaled the steep Abyssinian heights. He will see them clambering over the very summit of lofty ridges, where no gap occurs, and again descending on the other side, the sledge frequently toppling over a precipice, sometimes capsizing, and sometimes breaking.

Again: he will see the adventurous party, when baffled in their attempt to cross or find a pass, breaking a track with shovel and handspike; or, again, unable even with these appliances to accomplish their end, they retreat to seek an easier route. Perhaps they are fortunate enough to discover a kind of gap or gateway, and upon its winding and uneven surface accomplish a mile or so with comparative ease. The snow-drifts sometimes prove an assistance, but more frequently an obstruction; for though their surface is always hard, it is not always firm to the foot. Then the crust gives way, and the foot sinks at the very moment when the other is lifted. But, worse than this, the chasms between the hummocks may be overarched with snow in such a manner as to leave a considerable space at the bottom void and empty; then, when everything looks auspicious, down sinks one of the hapless explorers to his waist, another to the neck, a third is “lost to sight,” the sledge gives way, and all is confusion worse confounded! To educe order out of the chaos is probably the work of hours; especially if the sledge, as is often the case, must be unloaded. Not unfrequently it is necessary to carry the cargo in two or three loads; the sledges are coming and going continually; and the day is one “endless pull and haul.”

Dr. Hayes speaks of an ice-floe, crested with hummocks, and covered with crusted snow, the solid contents of which lie estimated, in round numbers, at 6,000,000,000 of tons, its depth being about one hundred and sixty feet. All around its border was banked up a kind of rampart of last year’s ice, the loftiest pinnacle of which rose fully one hundred and twenty feet above the sea-level. This ice-tower consisted of blocks of ice of every shape and size, piled one upon another in the greatest disorder. Numerous other towers, or bastions, equally rugged, though of less elevation, sprang from the same ridge, and from every part of this desolate area; and “if a thousand Lisbons were crowded together and tumbled to pieces by the shock of an earthquake, the scene could hardly be more rugged, nor to cross the ruins a severer task.”

We must date the origin of a floe like this back to a very remote period. Probably it was cradled, at the outset, in some deep recess of the land, where it remained until it had accumulated to a thickness which defied the summer’s sun and the winter’s winds. Then it would grow, as the glacier grows, from above; for, like the glacier, it is wholly composed of fresh ice—that is, of frozen snow. Thus it will be seen, to quote Dr. Hayes once more, that the accumulation of ice upon the mountain-tops is in nowise different from the accumulation which takes place upon these floating fields, where every recurring year marks an addition to their depth. Vast as they are to the sight, and pigmies as they are compared with the inland Mer de Glace, yet, in all that concerns their growth, they are truly glaciers, dwarf floating glaciers. That only in this manner can they grow to so great a depth will at once be conceded by the reader, if he recollects that ice soon reaches a maximum thickness by direct freezing, and that its growth is arrested by a natural law. Necessarily, this maximum thickness varies according to the temperature of the locality: but the ice is in itself the sea’s protection. The cold air cannot absorb the warmth of the water through more than a certain thickness of ice, and that thickness attains a final limit long before the winter has reached its close. The depth of ice formed on the first night is greater than that formed on the second; on the second is greater than on the third; on the third greater than on the fourth; and so it continues, until the increase no longer takes place. In other words, the ratio of increase of the thickness of ice is in inverse proportion to the duration of the period of freezing. There comes a time when the water beneath the ice no longer congeals, because the ice-crust above it protects it from the action of the atmosphere. Dr. Hayes asserts that he never saw an Arctic ice-table formed by direct freezing that exceeded eighteen feet; and he justly adds, that were it not for this all-wise provision of the Deity,—this natural law, as our men of science term it,—the Arctic waters would, ages ago, have been solid seas of ice to their profoundest depths.

Having said thus much about the various forms which the ice assumes in the Polar seas,—about their icebergs and ice-fields, pack-ice and drift-ice, and the thick belt of ice which surrounds their shores,—we may now direct the reader’s attention to their Animal Life; to the creatures which inhabit them, walrus and seal and whale, the fishes, the molluscs, and even minuter organisms.

And first we shall begin with the Walrus, which finds a congenial home in the Arctic wildernesses.

Walrus-hunting is the principal, or at all events the most lucrative, occupation of the Norse fishermen, who annually betake themselves to the cheerless shores oi Spitzbergen in search of booty. Their life is a terribly hard and dangerous one; and Mr. Lamont, who has had much experience of them, observes that they all have a restless, weary look about the eyes,—a look as if contracted by being perpetually in the presence of peril. They are wild, rough, and reckless; but they are also bold, hardy, and enduring of cold, hunger, fatigue; active and energetic while at sea, though sadly intemperate during their winter-holiday.

The vessels engaged in the seal-fishery and walrus-hunting are fitted out by the merchants of Tromsöe and Hammerfest, who have, of late years, adopted the system of sharing their proceeds with their crews, thus giving them a direct interest in the prosperity of the expedition. The ship is fitted out and provisioned by the owners, who also advance to the men what money they may require to purchase clothing and to make provision for their families during their absence. Then they allot one-third of the gross receipts of the adventure to the crew, dividing it into shares, three for the captain, two for the harpooneer, and one each for the common men. So that if a fairly successful voyage should realize in skins, blubber, and ivory a sum of two thousand dollars, and the number of hands amounts to ten, the usual strength of a seal-ship’s crew, each will receive forty-seven and a half dollars, or about £10,—a very considerable sum for a Norwegian.

Each ship carries a couple of boats, and a walrus-boat, capable of holding five men, which measures twenty-one feet in length by five feet beam, having her main breadth at about seven feet from the bow. She is bow-shaped at both ends, and so built as to turn easily on her own centre, besides being strong, light, and easy to row. Each man plies a pair of oars hung in “grummets” to stout thole-pins; the steersman directs the boat by also rowing a pair of oars, but with his face to the bow; and as there are six thwarts, he can, if necessary, sit and row like the others. By this arrangement the strength of the men is economized, and the boat is more swiftly turned when in pursuit of the walrus.

The steersman also acts as harpooneer, and, of course, sits in the bow. The strongest man in the boat is usually placed next to him, to hold and haul in the line when a walrus is struck, and it is his duty to hand the harpoons and lances to the harpooneer as required.