All ice becomes exceedingly fragile towards the close of the whale-fishing season, when the temperate air thaws its surface, and changes its solid structure into a brittle mass of imperfectly attached columns. Bergs in this state being struck by an axe, for the purpose of placing a mooring anchor, have been known to rend asunder, and precipitate the careless seaman into the yawning chasm; whilst, occasionally, the masses are hurled apart, and fall in contrary directions with a prodigious crash, burying boats and men in one common ruin. The awful effect produced by a solid mass, many thousands, or even millions, of tons in weight, changing its situation with the velocity of a falling body, whereby its aspiring summit is in a moment buried in the ocean, can be more easily imagined than described. Though a blow with an edge-tool on brittle ice does not sever the mass, still it is often succeeded by a crackling noise, proving the mass to be ready to burst from the force of internal expansion, or from the destruction of its texture by a warm temperature. It is common, when ships moor to icebergs, to lie as remote from them as their ropes will allow, and yet accidents sometimes happen, though the ship ride at the distance of a hundred yards from the ice. In the year 1812, while the Thomas, of Hull, captain Taylor, lay moored to an iceberg in Davis’s Strait, a _calf_ was detached from beneath, and rose with such tremendous force, that the keel of the ship was lifted on a level with water at the bow, and the stern was nearly immersed beneath the surface. Fortunately, the blow was received on the keel, and the ship was not materially damaged. From the deep pools of water found in the summer season on the depressed surface of some bergs, or from streams running down their sides, the ships navigating where they abound are presented with opportunities for watering with the greatest ease and dispatch. For this purpose, casks are landed upon the lower bergs, filled, and rolled into the sea; but, from the higher, the water is conveyed by means of a long tube of canvas, or leather, called a _hose_, into casks placed in the boats, at the side of the ice, or even upon the deck of the ship.