Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/176

130 with so many difficulties, dangers, and privations. Their toils are extremely fatiguing, and their avocation subjects them to a variety of unavoidable hardships; they are totally excluded from the comforts known to most other seamen; and, above all, they endure the extreme severity of rigorous cold. Should the severe calamity of sickness or accident occur while on this voyage, their situation becomes extremely pitiable, as the accommodation of a Greenland ship is little calculated to alleviate sufferings; nor is the supply of vegetable food such as sickness might require. Those who possess a spark of philanthropy must therefore feel for the situation of these men, and will not withhold from them their keenest sympathy.

On this Sunday a large bear was observed upon a piece of ice which we passed: Bruin looked at us, and took no other notice, but marched on, snuffing the breeze, as if conscious of the protection which the day afforded him, or, confident of his own power if attacked.

The fog that had prevailed during the night, cleared away in the morning, and the fleet as well as ourselves, sailed from latitude 76° to the westward, and continued going in that direction fourteen hours, when we came to a barrier of ice that extended from south to north in a westerly direction, and of an extent beyond our power to ascertain. It is impossible for language to describe the disappointment which we suffered at having our progress again arrested, and the effect which