Samuel G. Goodrich

PARLEY TELLS ABOUT THE FROZEN OCEAN.

Your old friend Peter loves to talk about the sea. Ever since he was a child, he loved everything belonging to the sea, and when he was a young man he went many long voyages, and met with many strange adventures, on the sea. Perhaps he did not find it quite so delightful to be shut up in the narrow compass of a ship, during long voyages, as he dreamt he should in his childhood. But he does not now regret whatever labours or sufferings he may have endured, for the pleasure he finds in telling you of them.

But I do not intend here to spin you a yarn (as the sailors say) about myself, but merely to describe to you some of the wonderful things I have seen during my voyages, that you may love and admire them.

You have never seen the sea frozen over in the same manner as you have seen ponds and rivers in winter. The waters of the sea, everywhere, contain a large portion of salt, as you know from their taste, and this prevents them from freezing, except where it is very cold. It is only near the poles of the earth that the ocean freezes, and there are large masses of ice, both at the north and south poles, which are never thawed, but stand as stedfast as the everlasting hills of granite.

Icebergs are large bodies of ice filling the valleys between the high mountains in northern latitudes. Sometimes they get loosened from the places where they were formed, by parts of them thawing, in seasons which are less cold than usual, and then rush down towards the sea, where they float about in all manner of fantastic and majestic forms.

These icebergs are the creation of ages, and annually increase by the falling of snows, and of rain, which instantly freezes, and more than repairs the loss occasioned by the heat of the sun.

I must tell you a little about the way in which cold converts water into ice.

Everything in nature is expanded or increased in bulk by heat. You may see in a thermometer how the quick-silver or the coloured spirit rises in the tube, because it expands when the instrument is in a warm place, and how it sinks in a cold place. It is just the same with solids and gases. This would seem to be a universal law of nature, if it were not for the single exception of water at the moment of its freezing. If water is cooled down to the freezing point, it will gradually diminish in bulk, but at the moment it turns into ice, it seems to spring outward, and increases considerably. In this way bottles are broken when the water in them freezes; and rocks are often split open in the same manner when the cracks in them contain water.

You have seen that ice does not sink in water, but floats upon the surface; this takes place, because from the circumstance which I have told you, a certain quantity of ice by weight, occupies more space than the same quantity of water. Now it is worth while for you to see how wisely this is arranged, as it respects our own climate and country; for if ice were to sink to the bottom, the lakes, and rivers, and ponds, would become solid masses of ice during winter, which the sun's rays would never thoroughly thaw in summer, because, after the surface had been thawed, the rays would have to pass through the water to get at the ice at the bottom, and thus our climate would be rendered very much colder than it is at present, and perhaps the springs would not circulate, so that we should often suffer from scarcity of water.

But when the salt water freezes, the ice is very porous, almost like a honeycomb, so that it is much lighter than frozen fresh water, and is very buoyant upon the sea, and stands out boldly to a great height, as is represented in the cut of the Icebergs.

I will tell you of a perilous situation in which I was placed in my younger days, when I went a voyage to Greenland in a whale ship. It was at the end of the fishing season, and our ship was the last but one of the oil traders left in those seas; we had been very unsuccessful, having only taken five small whales, and we were anxious to amend our ill luck by tarrying after all the other ships had sailed, in hopes of better success. We were gently sailing about in search of whales amidst the broken ice when there suddenly arose a rather brisk breeze, at which time our ship was situated between two icebergs,—one of them very high and resembling a lofty mountain, and the other considerably smaller.

Well, at the time the breeze sprung up, the large iceberg was to the windward of us, that is, on that side from whence the wind blew, and having a very large surface which caught the wind, it came sailing towards us very fast.

The vast bulk of this iceberg sheltered the smaller one, which was to the leeward of us, so that it did not move in the least, and we who were between the two, were completely becalmed. The ship was not advancing a knot in an hour, and we could do nothing whatever to help ourselves. We were in the greatest dismay, and could only consider the way in which we should meet our entire destruction. The larger mountain of ice continued to bear down upon us, and in a few minutes our vessel was crushed between it and the smaller one, as if it had been put in a huge smith's vice.

Fortunately, however, for us, the two icebergs clung together, the greater one impelling the lesser one forward, and we thus had time to get out of the ship all our sea-chests, a large quantity of cordage, nearly all our provisions, and everything portable; but the smaller iceberg soon shifted round the large one and let our ship loose, which instantly sank, and we, being on the small iceberg, were left floating on the ocean with despair staring us in the face. Our despair, however, was soon put to flight, for we perceived a ship at a short distance, to which we made signal, and they came to our assistance.

But, now I come to a part of the event which I grieve to record.—The captain and crew of the vessel which came to our succour, seeing that we had no other alternative, thought they could make an easy prey of us, and before they would consent to save us, required that we should give up to them all the things which we had been enabled to rescue from our wrecked ship!—In such circumstances you need not ask what we did,—life is sweet, it is said, and the pitiless prospect of the frozen regions around us, sharpened our appetite for the enjoyment of it, and we surrendered all but the clothes in which we stood.

Shall I tell you the place where these savages came from? No. I will only tell you that it lies in about 56 degrees North latitude, by 4½ West longitude; you may, if you please, find its name by looking in the map.