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I was asleep, and it was Terence's watch, when I was awakened by a loud noise like thunder, and a shout from him which made all the party start on their feet. The noise continued. It too much reminded us of that we had heard when the ice, in which we had been beset in our passage through Baffin's Bay, had begun to break up. "What's the matter now?" exclaimed several voices.
The wind veered round to the south-east, and the brig, under her mizensail, brigantine, topsails, and her topgallant sail, sailed up Baffin's Sea. It had been a particularly calm day, and the crew were able to take a little rest.
Some icebergs in Baffin's Bay have been seen stranded on a bottom 1000 or even 1500 feet deep. In the course of ages such a sea-bed may become densely covered with transported matter, from which some of the adjoining greater depths may be free.
It signifies, literally, a particular kind of cap, frequently a monk's cap or cowl. The Alexander, 252 tons, and the Isabel, 385, under command of the experienced officers, John Ross and Lieutenant Parry, with James Ross, Back, and Belcher, who were to win honour in Arctic explorations amongst their subordinates, were sent by the Government to explore Baffin's Bay and set sail on the 18th April.
"Now, the equatorial warm and salt current enters Baffin's Bay as a submarine current, while the cold and comparatively fresh waters of the Polar regions descend as a surface-current, bearing the great ice-fields of the Arctic seas to the southward.
In dwelling on Parry's voyages, we have, for the time, turned aside from those made at the same time by Ross, whose extraordinary exploration of Baffin's Bay had brought upon him the censure of the Admiralty, and who was anxious to regain his reputation for skill and courage.
Rink, "may be divided into two regions, the 'inland' and the 'outskirts. The 'inland, which is 800 miles from west to east, and of much greater length from north to south, is a vast unknown continent, buried under one continuous and colossal mass of permanent ice, which is always moving seaward, but a small proportion only of it in an easterly direction, since nearly the whole descends towards Baffin's Bay."
From here it travels northeast, following the trend of the coast line, until, off Cape Hatteras, it splits into three divisions, one of which, the westernmost, keeps on to lose its warmth and life in Baffin's Bay.
When at last they arrive at parts of Baffin's Bay deep enough to buoy up icebergs from 1000 to 1500 feet in vertical thickness, broken masses of them float off, carrying with them on their surface not only fine mud and sand but large stones.
When the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint's Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin's Bay.
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