not trusted the question to his
judgment, but established the rate by accurate scientific observation.
Now we were headed off by the ice and driven into as harbor on the 22d
of June; we left Hopedale and began our return on the 4th of August; and
between these two periods the ice never ceased running. The Moravian
ship, which entered the harbor of Hopedale half a mile ahead of us, on
the 31st of July, pushed through it, and found it eighty-five miles
wide. Toward the last it was more scattered, and at times could not be
seen from the coast. But it was there; and on the day before our
departure from Hopedale, August 3, this cheering intelligence
arrived:--"The ice is pressing in upon the islands outside, and an
easterly wind would block us in!"

What becomes of this ice? Had one lain in wait for it two hundred miles
farther south, it is doubtful if he would have seen of it even a
vestige. It cannot melt away so quickly: a day amidst it satisfies any
one of so much. Whither does it go?

Put that question to a sealer or fisherman, and he will answer, "_It
sinks._"

"But," replies that cheerful and confident gentleman, Mr. Current
Impression, "ice doesn't sink; ice floats." Grave Science, too, says the
same.

I believe that Ignorance is right for once. You are becalmed in the
midst of floating ice. The current bears you and it together; but next
morning the ice has vanished! You rub your eyes, but the fact is one not
to be rubbed out; the ice was, and isn't, there! No evidence exists that
it can fly, like riches; therefore I think it sinks. I have seen it,
too, not indeed in the very act of sinking, but so water-logged as
barely to keep its nose out. A block four cubic feet in dimension lay at
a subsequent time beside the ship, and there was not a portion bigger
than a child's fist above water. Watching it, again, when it has been
tolerably well sweltered, you will see air-bubbles incessantly escaping.
Evidently, the air which it contains is giving place to water. Now it is
this air, I judge, which keeps it afloat; and when the process of
displacement has sufficiently gone on, what can it do but drown, as men
do under the circumstances? This reasoning may be wrong; but the fact
remains. The reasoning is chiefly a guess; yet, till otherwise informed,
I shall say, the ice-_lungs_ get full of water, and it goes down.

But we have wandered while the light waned, and now return. It was a
gentle evening. That "day, so cool,