th terrific
force, capable of driving in her planks and breaking her stout timbers.
Often, also, he has to saw his way through sheets of ice, cutting out
canals with untiring perseverance to gain a piece of clear water beyond.
Sometimes his vessel is so tightly frozen within a field of ice that he
has no power to extricate her; then the field, urged by the tides or
wind, moves on at a rapid rate for hundreds of miles, till it encounters
some other field or a projecting shore. Now commences a scene of horror
which may well make the stoutest heart tremble. The field breaks into
thousands of fragments; huge masses of many hundred tons weight, and
larger than his ship, are thrown up, one on the other, rising almost as
if they had life, till they tower far above the sides of his vessel, and
appear ready every instant to crush her, as she lies helplessly among
this icy mass of a seeming ruined world. Sometimes a huge lump, bigger
than the ship herself, becomes attached to her bottom; and as the mass
around her melts, it rises to the surface, and throws her on her
beam-ends. Sometimes, as she is sailing in an open space, two fields
suddenly close in on her. If her crew have time to cut a dock in the
field nearest her, or find a bay ready formed, she may escape; if not,
when the fields meet, her stout ribs are crushed in as if they were of
wax, and the explorer is fortunate if he escapes to the ice with some of
his boats and a few provisions and clothes before his vessel disappears,
to encounter a voyage without shelter in that frigid region, till he
falls in with some whale ship, or can gain its inhospitable shores. But
suppose he escapes the dangers of the sea I have described, and many
others, and takes shelter for the winter in some bay or gulf, ice-bound,
he must remain during the winter without any communication with the rest
of his fellow-creatures besides those who form his own adventurous band.
The sun sinks below the horizon, and it is not seen again for months
together; darkness is around him, and one dreary mass of snow covers the
face of nature. The intense cold prevents him often from venturing
beyond the shelter with which he has surrounded his vessel; or if he is
tempted to do so, frost-bites may attack his hands and his feet, and
deprive him of their use. Sometimes the Arctic explorer has had to
journey for weeks together across the barren waste of ice or
snow-covered ground, dragging his sledge after him