“In the month of May of the present year (1813) I witnessed a more tremendous scene. Whilst navigating amidst the most ponderous ice which the Greenland seas present, in the prospect of making our escape from a state of _besetment_, our progress was unexpectedly arrested by an isthmus of ice, about a mile in breadth, formed by the coalition of the point of an immense _field_ on the north, with that of an aggregation of _floes_ on the south. To the north field we moored the ship, in the hope of the ice separating in this place. I then quitted the ship, and travelled over the ice to the point of collision, to observe the state of the bar which now prevented our release. I immediately discovered that the two points had but recently met; that already a prodigious mass of rubbish had been squeezed upon the top, and that the motion had not abated. The fields continued to overlay each other with a majestic motion, producing a noise resembling that of complicated machinery, or distant thunder. The pressure was so immense, that numerous fissures were occasioned, and the ice repeatedly rent beneath my feet. In one of the fissures, I found the snow on the level to be three and a half feet deep, and the ice upwards of twelve. In one place, hummocks had been thrown up to the height of twenty feet from the surface of the field, and at least twenty-five feet from the level of the water; they extended fifty or sixty yards in length, and fifteen in breadth, forming a mass of about two thousand tons in weight. The majestic unvaried movement of the ice--the singular noise with which it was accompanied--the tremendous power exerted--and the wonderful effects produced--were calculated to excite sensations of novelty and grandeur, in the mind of even the most careless Spectator! “Sometimes these motions of the ice may be accounted for. Fields are disturbed by currents--the wind--or the pressure of other ice against them. Though the set of the current be generally towards the south-west, yet it seems occasionally to vary; the wind forces all ice to leeward, with a velocity nearly in the inverse proportion to its depth under water; light ice consequently drives faster than heavy ice, and loose ice than fields: loose ice meeting the side of a field in its course, becomes deflected, and its re-action causes a circular motion of the field. Fields may approximate each other from three causes: _First_, If the lighter ice be to windward, it will, of necessity, be impelled towards the heavier; _secondly_, As the wind frequently commences blowing on the windward side of the ice, and continues several hours before it is felt a few miles distant to leeward, the field begins to drift before the wind can produce any impression on ice, on its opposite side; and, _thirdly_, Which is not an uncommon case, by the two fields being impelled towards each other, by winds acting on each from opposite quarters.