The outer, or northern edge of this immense field of ice, was composed of loose or broken ice, closely packed together, so that it was not possible to find any entrance. Such mountains of ice, Captain Cook was persuaded, were never seen in the Greenland seas, so that no comparison could be drawn; and it was the opinion of most of the persons on board, that this ice extended quite to the pole, from which they were then less than nineteen degrees; or, perhaps, that it was joined to some land to which it had been fixed from the earliest time. Our navigator was of opinion that it is to the south of this parallel that all the ice is formed which is found scattered up and down to the northward, and afterward broken off by gales of wind, or other causes, and brought forward by the currents which are always found to set in that direction in high latitudes. “Should there,” he observes, “be land to the south behind this ice, it can afford no better retreat for birds, or any other animals, than the ice itself, with which it must be wholly covered. I, who was ambitious, not only to go further than any one had been before, but as far as it was possible for man to go, was not sorry at meeting with this interruption; as it in some measure relieved us, or at least shortened the dangers and hardships inseparable from the navigation of the southern polar regions.” The approximation of several fields of ice of different magnitudes, produces a very singular phenomenon. The smaller of these masses are forced out of the water, and thrown on the larger ones, until at length an aggregate is formed of a tremendous hight. These accumulated bodies of ice float in the sea like so many rugged mountains, and are continually increased in hight by the freezing of the spray of the sea, and the melting and then freezing of the snow which falls on them. While their growth is thus augmented, the smaller fields, of a less elevation, are the meadows of the seals, on which these animals at times frolic by hundreds. The collision of great fields of ice, in high latitudes, is often attended by a noise, which, for a time, takes away the sense of hearing anything beside; and that of the smaller fields, with a grinding of unspeakable horror. The water which dashes against the mountainous ice, freezes into an infinite variety of forms, and presents to the admiring view of the voyager ideal towns, streets, churches, steeples, and almost every form which imagination can picture to itself.