Thus there is no period of the year in which large quantities of ice may not be seen floating about in the arctic seas.
This fact it is that enables us to speak appropriately of the scenery of the Arctic Ocean. And assuredly this scenery of the ice is exceedingly and strikingly beautiful. The imagination cannot conceive the dazzling effect of a bright summer day in those regions, when the ocean is clear as glass, and ice-humps and ice-mountains of every shape and size are glittering in the sun’s rays with intense brilliancy, while the delicate whiteness of these floating islands, and the magical atmospheric illusions by which they are frequently surrounded, render the scene pre-eminently fairy-like.
All the navigators who have penetrated into the arctic seas speak with enthusiasm of the splendour of floating ice-masses. They take the most curious and fantastic shapes; sometimes appearing like great cities of white marble, with domes and towers and spires in profusion; sometimes looming huge and grand like fortresses, and many of them with their summits overhanging so much as to suggest the idea that they are about to fall. This indeed, they often do, adding to the grandeur of the scene, and not a little to the danger, should ships chance to be in the neighbourhood.
The atmospheric illusions, before mentioned, are the result of different temperatures existing within a few miles of each other, and which are caused by the presence of large bodies of ice. The effect of this is to cause the ice-masses on the horizon to appear as if floating in the air, and to distort them into all sorts of shapes, even turning them upside down, and thus affording to an innovative mind a most ample and attractive field wherein to expatiate.
To ascertain the causes of facts and effects so curious must be interesting to all who have inquiring minds. We will, therefore, attempt to describe and account for arctic phenomena in the following chapters as simply as may be.
Chapter Nine.
Formation of Ice—Dangers of Disrupting Ice—Anecdote—Drifting Ice—Drift of the “Fox”—“Nipping” Anecdote—Loss of the “Breadalbane.”
It is well known that when fresh water becomes so cold that its temperature is 32 degrees of Fahrenheit’s scale, it loses its liquid form and becomes ice. A somewhat lower temperature than this is necessary to freeze salt water; the reason being, that greater force is required to expel the salt which the sea holds in solution,—which salt is always more or less expelled in the process of freezing.