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We shall now turn our attention to another, and a very prominent form, in which arctic ice presents itself namely, that of icebergs. There are not only ice-fields, ice-floes, etcetera, in the polar seas, but there are ice-mountains, or bergs. It was long a matter of uncertainty as to where and how those immense mountains, that are met with occasionally at sea, were formed.
One day, after the east wind had ceased to blow the breath of the ice-fields of Labrador against the New England coast, and the buds on the trees along the mall between the lawns of the avenue were venturing forth in a hardy experiment of the Boston May, Mrs. Vostrand asked Westover if she had told him that Mr. Vostrand was actually coming on to Boston.
"I have said that the pieces of ice now about us were called 'floes, or ice-fields; the whole together was called 'the pack. We were now in perfectly smooth water, for you will easily understand that the ice which we had passed broke the swell of the sea.
But some other vessels which had come up while we were fishing, and were very near to us, were not so lucky. Two of them were caught by the moving ice-fields before they could make their escape, and were crushed all to pieces.
I calculated that we were 250 miles from the nearest known land to the westward, and more than 500 miles from the nearest outpost of civilization, Wilhelmina Bay. I hoped we would not have to undertake a march across the moving ice-fields.
Those ice-fields inland and the warm air from the Japanese Current offshore kick up some funny atmospheric pranks. It's the worst spot on the coast and we'll lose a ship there some day. Why, the place isn't properly charted, let alone buoyed." "That's nothing unusual for this coast." "True for you.
One must be able to endure pain, like the Red Indian braves; to go long periods fasting and without food or drink, like the choupan among the Western Inoits who, wanders for whole nights over the ice-fields under the moon, scantily clothed and braving the intense cold; to overcome the very fear of death and danger, like the Australian novices who, at first terrified by the sound of the bull-roarer and threats of fire and the knife, learn finally to cast their fears away.
It was probable that had the banks not narrowed, the barrier would not have formed. But the misfortune was irreparable, and the fugitives must give up all hope of attaining their object. Had they possessed the tools usually employed by whalers to cut channels through the ice-fields had they been able to get through to where the river widened they might have been saved.
When the sheet of ice, extending from the Arctic regions over a great part of North America and coming down to the sea, slowly melted away, the waters were not distributed over the face of the country as they now are. They rested upon the bottom deposits of the ice-fields, upon the glacial paste, consisting of clay, sand, pebbles, boulders, etc., underlying the ice.
Soon afterward the Muscovy Company of London sent out an exploring expedition with instructions to find a northwest passage. This expedition, taking a different route from its predecessors, reached Nova Zembla. But the ice-fields forced the vessel back to the shores of Lapland, and the ship was never spoken of again. Years afterward the ship's company were found frozen in death.
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