That extensive body of ice which, with occasional tracts of land, occupies the northern extremity of the earth, and prevents all access to the regions immediately surrounding the Pole, fills, it appears, on an average, a circle of above two thousand geographical miles diameter, and presents an outline which, though subject to partial variations, is found at the same season of each succeeding year to be generally similar, and often strikingly uniform. The most remarkable alteration in the configuration of the Polar ice on record, is that said to have taken place between Iceland and Greenland, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, whereby the intercourse between the Icelanders and the colonies in Greenland was interrupted; and, although many attempts have been made on the part of Denmark for the recovery of these colonies, and for ascertaining the fate of the colonists, they have not yet succeeded. In various countries, changes of climate, to a certain extent, have occurred within the limits of historical record; these changes have been commonly for the better, and have been considered as the effects of human industry, in draining marshes and lakes, felling woods, and cultivating the earth; but here is an occurrence which, if it be indeed true, is the reverse of common experience, and concerning the causes of which it is not easy to offer any conjecture. With each recurring spring, the north Polar ice presents the following general outline. Filling the Bays of Hudson and Baffin, as well as the Straits of Hudson, and part of that of Davis, it exhibits an irregular, waving, but generally continuous line, from Newfoundland or Labrador to Nova Zembla. From Newfoundland it extends in a northerly direction along the Labrador shore, generally preventing all access to the land, as high as the mouth of Hudson’s Strait; then, turning to the north-eastward, forms a bay near the coast of Greenland, in latitude perhaps 66° or 67°, by suddenly passing away to the southward to the extremity of Greenland. The quantity of ice on the east side of Davis’s Strait being often small, the continuity of its border is liable to be broken, so as to admit of ships reaching the land; and sometimes the bay of the ice, usually occurring in the spring, in latitude 66° or 67°, does not exist, but the sea is open up the strait to a considerable distance beyond it. After doubling the southern promontory, or Cape Farewell, it advances in a north-eastern direction along the east coast, sometimes enveloping Iceland as it proceeds, until it reaches the Island of Jan Mayen. Passing this island on the north-west, but frequently inclosing it, the edge of the ice then trends a little more to the eastward, and usually intersects the meridian of London between the 71st and 73rd degree of latitude. Having reached the longitude of 5° or 6° east, in some instances as far as 8° or 10°, in the 73rd or 74th degree or north latitude, it joins a remarkable promontory, and