Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/142

104 welfare, and feeling an earnest desire for their health and prosperity.

The ice being observed to open about three o'clock, we had the gratification of again pursuing our western course, through its intricate leads and zig-zag angles, where there was much difficulty in keeping clear from dangerous floes strewed with hummocks; one of these solid masses was at least fifty feet high, thirty feet broad, and twenty feet in thickness; and had doubtless been forced upon the floe when in contact with some other piece. This, with other evidences of the prodigious power of bodies of ice when in motion, I could not behold without feelings of horror, knowing what would be the fate of the Baffin if caught in their clutches. This beautiful day's sailing, which exceeded all that I had hitherto seen, closed with our proceeding as far as the ice would allow; in the evening we were encircled by a dense fog. The altitude of the sun at noon, was 39° 30′ and at midnight 7° 30′.

The bustle attendant on lowering a boat, called me up from my birth at half past four o'clock; when I arrived upon the deck, I saw the crew of one boat armed with lances and ranged on the borders of the ice, while a second boat was in full chase of an immense bear that had been attacked by the party on the ice, and had kept all its assailants at bay, until it had succeeded in effecting a good retreat into the water. The animal swam so astonishingly fast, that it was at least half