Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/110

80 The crew having recovered from their fatigue, and the ship being well cleansed from the grease and filth that attended the unpleasant operation of making off, we unmoored from the ice at ten o'clock, and sailed to the southward, traversing a vast space of ocean, the face of which was often studded with ice of varied forms, and of different extent from a rood to several acres in surface. Often did the ship, under full sail, pass through openings scarcely wider than itself, and frequently not only was the horizon obscured in a mist, but the ship became wrapt in a vapour so dense, as to render our situation extremely perilous among the numerous obstacles that lay in our way. After several fruitless attempts to find a passage from the ice, we at length succeeded, again entered the open sea, and, not having seen a whale for several days, steered to the northward, in hopes of further and better success.

We sailed by the side of a long piece of ice, called a sea-stream; it lay in the direction of north-east and south-west, often varying from that line in different meanderings, yet keeping its contiguity; from the mast-head the eye was unable to determine its extent, but, from what passed under my observation, it might fairly be presumed to be at least fifty miles; it varied in breadth from one hundred yards to several miles. This curious phenomenon is not generally found, and the imagination is at a loss to conceive by what agency the detached pieces, of which it is composed, are