Of the inanimate productions of the Polar Seas, none perhaps excite so much interest and astonishment in a stranger as the ice in its great abundance and variety. The stupendous masses known by the name of icelands or icebergs, common to Davis’s Strait, and sometimes met with in the Spitzbergen Sea, from their height, various forms, and the depth of water in which they ground, are calculated to strike the beholder with wonder; yet the prodigious sheets of ice, called ice-fields, more peculiar to the Spitzbergen Sea, are not less astonishing. Their deficiency in elevation is sufficiently compensated by their amazing extent of surface. Some of them have been observed extending many leagues in length, and covering an area of several hundreds of square miles, each consisting of a single sheet of ice, having its surface raised in general four or six feet above the level of the water, and its base depressed to the depth of ten to twenty feet beneath. The ice in general is designated by a variety of appellations, distinguishing it according to the size or shape of the pieces, their number or form of aggregation, thickness, transparency, situation, etc. As the different denominations of ice will be frequently referred to in the course of this work, it may be useful to give definitions of the terms in use among the whale-fishers for distinguishing them. 1. An _iceberg_, or ice-mountain, is a large insulated peak of floating ice, or a glacier, occupying a ravine or valley, generally opening towards the sea in an arctic country. 2. A _field_ is a sheet of ice, so extensive that its limits cannot be discerned from the ship’s mast-head. 3. A _floe_ is similar to a field, but smaller, inasmuch as its extent _can_ be seen. This term, however, is seldom applied to pieces of ice of less diameter than half-a-mile or a mile. 4. _Drift-ice_ consists of pieces less than floes, of various shapes and magnitudes. 5. _Brash-ice_ is still smaller than drift-ice, and may be considered as the wreck of other kinds of ice. 6. _Bay-ice_ is that which is newly-formed on the sea, and consists of two kinds, common bay-ice and _pancake_-ice; the former occurring in smooth extensive sheets, and the latter in small circular pieces, with raised edges. 7. _Sludge_ consists of a stratum of detached ice crystals, or of snow, or of the smaller fragments of brash-ice, floating on the surface of the sea.