The barrier which we have described, when it occurs, is regularly encountered on the first arrival of the Greenland ships in the month of April, but is generally removed by natural means as the season advances. It is usually found separate from the land, and divided asunder by the close of the month of June; and hence it is that, however difficult and laborious may have been the ingress into the fishing country, the egress is commonly effected without much inconvenience. In the month of May, the severity of the frost relaxes, and the temperature generally approaches a few degrees of the freezing point. The salt in the sea then exerts its liquefying influence, and destroys the tenacity of the bay-ice, makes inroads in its parts by enlarging its pores into holes, diminishes its thickness, and, in the language of the whale-fisher, completely rots it. Packed drift-ice is then liberated, and obeys the slightest impulses of the winds or currents. The heavier having more stability than the lighter, an apparent difference of movement obtains among the pieces, and holes and lanes of water are formed to allow the entrance and progress of the ships. Bay-ice, though sometimes serviceable to the whalers in preserving them from the brunt of the heavy ice, is often the means of besetment, and hence the primary cause of every calamity. Heavy ice, many feet in thickness, and in detached pieces of from fifty to a hundred tons’ weight each, though crowded together in the form of a pack, may be penetrated in a favourable gale with tolerable dispatch, whilst a sheet of bay-ice, of a few inches only in thickness, with the same advantage of wind, will often arrest the progress of the ship, and render her in a few minutes immovable. If this ice be too strong to be broken by the weight of the boat, recourse must be had to sawing, an operation slow and laborious in the extreme.