Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/161

Rh destruction; some of these masses came with great violence against the ship.

The fog at length yielded, and became less dense, and we found ourselves not a hundred and fifty yards from the rugged frozen ridge of a field of ice, on which Were monstrous masses,—one of them resembling a castle—with a water blink stretching across the horizon. About noon the fog had totally subsided, and from the stillness of the day and the brightness of the sun, the surface of the ocean like a most dazzling mirror, reflected the perfect representation of the four ships in company, every rope in which was distinctly exhibited. Among the different objects so pleasingly reflected, I could not avoid noticing the effect produced from drops of oil exuding from the jaw-bones of a whale which we had killed, and which were suspended at the bows of the ship. When a drop of oil fell from these into the water, the colours produced from refraction were those of the prism in their richest hues; and they continued to change in character and form by the slightest undulation of that great body of water, so that they were rendered as various as the colours of the kaleidoscope and infinitely finer in their tints.

At ten o'clock at night the ice was observed to be in rapid motion, in a course opposed to our proceeding westward; at this time some of the richest clouds I ever beheld, were lining the canopy, of heaven: the extraordinary blueness of the water, and its peculiar transparency were astonishingly