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Updated: May 2, 2025
The weather fair and clear, excepting now and then a snow-shower. The mercury in the thermometer at noon rose to 40; whereas, for several days before, it had been no higher than 36 or 38. We had several ice-islands in sight, but no one thing that could induce us to think that any land was in our neighbourhood. At eight in the evening a breeze sprung up at S.E., with which we stood to N.E.
The corvettes soon entered a huge basin, formed by the coast and the ice-islands which had just been passed. The land stretched away in the south-east and north-west as far as the eye could reach. It was between three and four thousand feet high, but nowhere presented any very salient features. In the centre of the vast snow plain rose a few rocks.
It was almost dark when, with little time to spare, La Salle came flying through the fast-coming ice, and dashed across the narrow lane of water, between the immovable covering of the bar, and the advancing, tide-borne ice-islands.
These observations were more to be depended on than those made the night before, there being much less sea now than then. In the afternoon, we passed three ice-islands. This night was spent as the preceding.
The cliffs alone was all which was to be seen like land. Several large ice-islands lay upon the coast; one of which attracted my notice.
During the night the wind abated, and veered to N.W., which enabled us to steer more to the north, having no business farther south. Heads of what has been done in the Voyage; with some Conjectures concerning the Formation of Ice-Islands; and an Account of our Proceedings till our Arrival at the Cape of Good Hope. 1775 February
On the 7th February he once more doubled the southern cape, sailed by a sheet of ice fifty miles wide, and on the 20th February reached S. lat. 74 degrees 15 minutes. From the top of the masts nothing was to be seen but an open sea with a few floating ice-islands. Unexpected results had ensued from these trips in a southerly direction.
Captain Poke," I exclaimed, the instant I caught a glimpse of the formidable danger that menaced us, "you surely do not mean to continue madly on, with such a warning of the consequences in plain view?" "What would you have, Sir John? Leaphigh lies on the t'other side of these ice-islands!" "But you need not run the ship against them why not go round them?"
One oar, however, was left of its original length for a support to the McIntosh, which, being about eight feet square, and furnished with brass eyelets, was easily fitted as a sail; and owing to its black hue, was especially suitable for a signal of distress among the ice-islands of the Gulf.
The formation or coagulation of ice-islands has not, to my knowledge, been thoroughly investigated. Some have supposed them to be formed by the freezing of the water at the mouths of large rivers, or great cataracts, where they accumulate till they are broken off by their own weight.
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