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172 The travellers had hardly time to reflect with gratitude to God on their safety, when that part of the ice from which they had just now made good their landing burst asunder, and the water forcing itself from below, covered and precipitated it into the sea. In an instant, as if by a signal given, the whole mass of ice, extending for several miles from the coast, and as far as the eye could reach, began to burst, and be overwhelmed by the immense waves. The sight was tremendous and awfully grand; the large fields of ice, raising themselves out of the water, striking against each other, and plunging into the deep, with a violence not to be described, and a noise like the discharge of innumerable batteries of heavy guns. The darkness of the night, the roaring of the wind and sea, and the dashing of the waves and ice against the rocks, filled the travellers with sensations of awe and horror, so as