7th, Made fast to an iceberg about seventy yards long and forty broad, and about twenty feet above the surface of the water. It was very much furrowed, and, from its great depth, drifted but little, while the lesser fragments of ice were driven past it at the rate of about two knots an hour. I had this day a complete proof of the fallacy of the opinion, which maintained that salt water did not freeze. All around the ship, ice was formed on the surface of the water; I observed the spiculæ darting with considerable velocity, and in an immense variety of forms. This ice, when newly formed, is of a bay colour, and when it has attained the thickness of window glass is called by the sailors, _bay ice_. It is rough on the surface, and opaque; if the frost be not interrupted by a swell of the sea, or storm, the salt-water ice often extends to an immense distance. It is by the Greenland sailors termed a _field_, when of such extent that the eye cannot reach its bounds. The smaller fragments of salt-water ice are called _seal meadows_, and on them these animals often sport by hundreds. In storms large masses of ice are frequently piled on each other, to a considerable height; these are called _packs_, and often assume a very fantastic appearance. The grinding noise occasioned by the collision of those huge masses of ice against each other, and against the ship, not only fills the mind of the auditor with a degree of horror, but, for a considerable time, deprives him of the sense of hearing. Storms in those seas are so extremely dangerous, that the most powerful pens could convey but a faint representation of their horrific sublimity.-- The fury of the ocean is but the least of the enemies the sailor has to contend with. If the ship, during a storm, should be encircled by ice, there is hardly a possibility of avoiding impending fate. 8th, Discovered the south point of Prince Charles’ Island, bearing east, distant six leagues. On the 11th, we made Fair Foreland, or Vogel Hook, the northern extremity of Charles’ Island and on the 13th, we reached the southern extremity of the westernmost cape, forming Cross-bay in Spitzbergen, at a short distance from which, we were made fast to a large iceberg. Spitzbergen is a general appellation given to a vast assemblage of frozen islands, lying between South Cape, in 76° 30´, and Verlegan Hook, in 80° 7´ north latitude. Its greatest breadth is from the westernmost part of Mauritius, or Amsterdam Island, called Hackluyt’s Headland, to the extreme east point of North-Eastland, comprising from 9° to nearly 24° east longitude.