CHAP. LI.
CURIOSITIES RESPECTING ICE.
On the Greenland, or Polar Ice—On the Tremendous Concussion of Fields of Ice—Icebergs—Magnitude of Icebergs—The Glaciers—Shower of Ice—Remarkable Frosts.
| There winter, arm’d with terrors here unknown, Sits absolute on his unshaken throne; Piles up his stores amid the frozen waste, And bids the mountains he has built, stand fast; Beckons the legions of his storms away From happier scenes, to make this land a prey; Proclaims the soil a conquest he has won, And scorns to share it with the distant sun. Cowper. |
Another poet thus describes the polar regions:—
| Vast regions, dreary, bleak, and bare! There on an icy mountain’s height, Seen only by the moon’s pale light, Stern winter rears his giant form, His robe a mist, his voice a storm: His frown the shiv’ring nations fly, And, hid for half the year, in smoky caverns lie. Scott. |
The Greenland, or Polar Ice.
The following account of the Greenland, or Polar Ice, is abridged by the Editor of this work from a paper, by W. Scoresby, jun. M. W. S. published in The Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural-History Society:—
“Greenland is a country where every object is strikingly singular, or highly magnificent. The atmosphere, the land, and the ocean, each exhibit remarkable or sublime appearances.
“With regard to the atmosphere, several peculiarities may be noticed, viz. its darkness of colour, and density; its frequent production of crystallized snow in a wonderful perfection and variety of form and texture; and its astonishingly sudden changes from calm to storm, from fair weather to foul, and vice versâ.