“A bight signifies a bay or sinuosity, on the border of any large mass or body of ice. It is supposed to be called bight, from the low word bite, to take in, or entrap; because, in this situation, ships are sometimes so caught by a change of wind, that the ice cannot be cleared on either tack; and in some cases, a total loss has been the consequence.”
On the Tremendous Concussions of Fields of Ice.—The occasional rapid motion of fields, with the strange effects produced on any opposing substance, exhibited by such immense bodies, is one of the most striking objects this country presents, and is certainly the most terrific. They not unfrequently acquire a rotary movement, whereby the circumference attains a velocity of several miles per hour. A field, thus in motion, coming in contact with another at rest, or, more especially, with a contrary direction of movement, produces a dreadful shock. The consequences of a body of more than ten thousand millions of tons in weight, meeting with resistance when in motion, may be better conceived than expressed! The weaker field is crushed with an awful noise; sometimes the destruction is mutual: pieces of huge dimensions and weight are not unfrequently piled upon the top, to the height of twenty or thirty feet, whilst doubtless a proportionate quantity is depressed beneath. The view of these stupendous effects, in safety, exhibits a picture sublimely grand; but where there is danger of being overwhelmed, terror and dismay must be the predominant feelings. The whale-fishers at all times require unremitting vigilance to secure their safety, but scarcely in any situation so much, as when navigating amidst those fields: in foggy weather, they are particularly dangerous, as their motions cannot then be distinctly observed. It may easily be imagined, that the strongest ship can no more withstand the shock of two fields, than a sheet of paper can stop a musket-ball. Numbers of vessels, since the establishment of the fishery, have been thus destroyed; some have been thrown upon the ice, some have had their hulls completely torn open, and others have been buried beneath the heaped fragments of the ice.
Icebergs.—“The term icebergs has commonly been applied to those immense bodies of ice situated on the land, ‘filling the valleys between the high mountains,’ and generally exhibiting a square perpendicular towards the sea. They recede backward inland to an extent never explored. Martin, Crantz, Phipps, and others, have described those wonders of nature, and all agree as to their manner of formation, in the congelation of the sleet and rains of summer, and of the accumulated snow, partly dissolved by the summer sun, which, on its decline, freezes to a transparent ice. They are as permanent as the rocks on which they rest: for although large portions may be frequently separated, yet the annual growth replaces the loss, and probably on the whole, produces a perpetual increase. I have seen those styled the Seven Icebergs, situated in the valleys of the north-west coast of Spitzbergen; their perpendicular front maybe about 300 feet in height, the green colour, and glistening surface of which, form a pleasing variety in prospect, with the magnificence of the encompassing snow-clad mountains, which, as they recede from the eye, seem to rise ‘crag above crag,’ in endless perspective.
ICEBERGS OF GREENLAND.—[Page 526.]
ICEBERGS OF SPITZBERGEN.—[Page 528.]
“Large pieces may be separated from those icebergs in the summer season, when they are particularly fragile, by their ponderous overhanging masses overcoming the force of cohesion; or otherwise, by the powerful expansion of the water, filling any excavation or deep-seated cavity, when its dimensions are enlarged by freezing, thereby exerting a tremendous force, and bursting the whole asunder.
“Pieces thus or otherwise detached, are hurled into the sea with a dreadful crash: if they are received into deep water, they are liable to be drifted off the land, and, under the form of ice-islands, or ice-mountains, they likewise still retain their parent name of icebergs. I much question, however, if all the floating bergs seen in the seas west of Old Greenland, thus derive their origin, their number being so great, and their dimensions so vast.”