Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/160

118 the spiculæ darting with considerable velocity on the surface of e water, in all the pleasing variety of congelation. This excited my particular attention from its occurring in a space, that half an hour before, had been covered by ice, when the contiguous water was perfectly open. The operation here evident, combined with many other proofs I had witnessed to convince me of the fact that sea water does freeze, a circumstance that has been doubted. After a navigation of inconceivable interest, we came by a small inlet into a considerable space of water, surrounded by a field, floes, and seal meadows of ice; where we lay to, not being able to proceed further to the westward in the course which we had been pursuing.

We moored the ship to a large floe of ice not far distant, and of an extent just to render visible two ships on the opposite side; here the crew were employed in getting fresh water from pools that had been formed by the melting of the snow on the surface of the ice. Three whales were seen, and boats sent after them, but as the fog was dense, and the fish did not re-appear, the boats returned. The usual effects of a calm followed, and brought some of those extreme dangers attendant on the navigation of these seas, by the separation of large bodies of ice at such times. We were thus kept in constant watchfulness, not from imaginary apprehensions, but from the warning of many heavy and extensive pieces, being observed through the mist to threaten to beset us, if not to prove our