. The Arctic world: its plants, animals and natural phenomena [microform] : with a historical sketch of Arctic discovery down to the British Polar Expedition: 1875-76. British Polar Expedition, 1875-76; British Polar Expedition, 1875-76; Zoology; Zoologie. 54 THE ICE-FIELDS OF THE NORTH. a Ixjiit over the ico-fiolds, but was then conipollcd to abandon his daring and hazardous attempt, because the current carried the ice soutliward more rapidly than he could traverse it to the north. In warm summers this mass of ice will suddenly clear away and leave an open streak of silver sea alonjj the west
. The Arctic world: its plants, animals and natural phenomena [microform] : with a historical sketch of Arctic discovery down to the British Polar Expedition: 1875-76. British Polar Expedition, 1875-76; British Polar Expedition, 1875-76; Zoology; Zoologie. 54 THE ICE-FIELDS OF THE NORTH. a Ixjiit over the ico-fiolds, but was then conipollcd to abandon his daring and hazardous attempt, because the current carried the ice soutliward more rapidly than he could traverse it to the north. In warm summers this mass of ice will suddenly clear away and leave an open streak of silver sea alonjj the west coast of Spitzbergcn, varyinjj in width from sixty to one hundred and fifty miles, and reaching as high as HO or 80' W N. latitude. It was through this channel that Scoresby bore is ship on the expedition to wliich we have just alluded. A direct course from the Thames,. CH.\!fSEL IN AN ICE-FIELD. across the Pole, to Behring Strait is 2,570 geographical miles; by Lancaster Sound it is 4,GG0 miles. The Russians would saved a voyage of 18,000 geographical miles could they strike across the Polo and through Reining Strait to British Columbia, instead of going by Cape Horn. Ice-fields, twenty to thirty miles across are of frequent occurrence in the great Northern Ocean; sometimes they extend fully one hundred miles, so closely and solidly packed that no opening, even for a boat, intervenes between them ; they vary in thickness from ten to forty or even fifty feet. At times these fields, which are many thousand millions of tons in weight, acquire a rajiid rotatory motion, and dash against one another with a fury of which no words can give an accurate idea. The reader knows what awful results are j)roduced by the collision of two railway trains, and may succeed, perhaps, in forming some feeble conception of this still nore appalling scene when he remembers the huge dimensions and solidity of the opposing forces. The waters seethe and foam, as if lashed by a tremendous tempest; the ai
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectzoology, bookyear1876
