When the warmth of the season has rotted the bay-ice, the passage to the northward can generally be accomplished with a very great saving of labour. Therefore it was the older fishers seldom or never used to attempt it before the 10th of May, and foreign fishers in the present day are in general late. Sometimes late arrivals are otherwise beneficial, since it frequently happens, in _close seasons_, that ships entering the ice about the middle of May obtain an advantage over those preceding them, by gaining a situation more eligible, on account of its nearness to the land. Their predecessors, meanwhile, are drifted off to the westward with the ice, and cannot recover their easting. Hence, it appears, it would be economical and beneficial to sail so late as not to reach the _country_ before the middle of May, or to persevere on the sealing stations until that time. There are, however, some weighty objections to this method. Open seasons occasionally occur, and great progress may be made, especially by superior fishers, before that time. A week or a fortnight’s solitary fishing, under favourable circumstances, has frequently gained half a cargo. The change which takes place in the ice, amidst which the whale-fisher pursues his object, is, towards the close of the _season_, indeed astonishing. For, not only does it separate into its original individual portions, not only does it retreat in a body from the western coast of Spitzbergen, but, in general, that barrier of ice which incloses the fishing-site in the spring, which costs the fisher immense labour and anxiety to penetrate, by retarding his advance towards the north, and his progress in the fishery, for the space of several weeks, spontaneously divides in the midst about the month of June, and, on the return of the ships, is not at all to be seen. Then is the sea rendered freely navigable from the very haunts of the whales to the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Our remarks may now be directed, for a few pages, to the properties, peculiar movements, and drifting of the ice. 1. The ice always has a tendency to separate during calms. 2. Openings in packs and among fields, or floes, frequently break out, or disappear, without any apparent cause. 3. Fields often open, close, and revolve, in the most extraordinary manner, in calms as well as in storms. 4. The amazing changes which take place amongst the most compact ice are often unaccountable. 5. When speaking of the currents of the Spitzbergen Sea, it has been remarked that the Polar ice, in this situation, has a constant tendency to drift to the south-westward. Near Spitzbergen, indeed, this tendency is not usually observed, because the influence of the tide, eddies, peculiar pressures, etc., sometimes produce a contrary effect; but, at a distance from land, its universal prevalence is easily illustrated.