Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/136

98 experienced yesterday, it was therefore deemed expedient to run into open water for security. Scarcely did I experience, during the voyage, a more unpleasant night;. a continued fall of snow rendered the cold intense. The violence of the gale often laid the vessel on her "beam ends;" and the heavy blows that she received from the ice, the effect of which I can only compare to the shock sustained by a ship in striking against sunken rocks, would have occasioned me the most serious apprehensions for our safety, if I had not become habituated to the incidents of an arctic voyage.

Having lay to the greater part of yesterday, for the purpose of attending to the duties of the Sabbath, and the wind this morning abating to a gentle breeze from the north, we sailed towards the body of western ice. The seamanship displayed during this day, in making judicious boards to weather points that occurred in our course through a long, strait, and treacherous opening in the ice, was beyond all praise. It is impossible to conceive any thing more interesting than the intricacies of the passage between floes of various sizes, many of which had evidently been broken from fields during the late gales. The sun dazzled my eyes by its glow upon the snow-clad ice, and the temperature of the thermometer became reduced to thirty-five degrees.

The effect of this powerful exhalation soon began to indicate what might be expected; a thick