they are frightful only to
strangers.

"As the wind rose to a storm, the swell had now increased so much that
its effects on the ice were extraordinary, and really alarming. The
sledges, instead of gliding smoothly along as on an even surface,
sometimes ran with violence after the dogs, and sometimes seemed with
difficulty to ascend a rising hill. Noises, too, like the report of
cannon, were now distinctly heard in many directions, from the bursting
of the ice at a distance. Alarmed at these frightful phenomena, our
travellers drove with all haste towards the shore; and, as they
approached it, the prospect before them was tremendous. The ice having
burst loose from the rocks, was tossed to and fro, and broken in a
thousand pieces against the precipices with a dreadful noise; which,
added to the raging of the sea, the roaring of the wind, and the driving
of the snow, so overpowered them as almost completely to deprive them of
the use of their eyes and ears.

"To make the land was now the only resource that remained, but it was
with the utmost difficulty that the frightened dogs could be driven
forward; and as the whole body of the ice frequently sank below the
summits of the rocks, and then rose above them, the only time for
landing was the moment it gained the level of the coast--a circumstance
which rendered the attempt extremely nice and hazardous.

"Both sledges, however, succeeded in gaining the shore, and were drawn
up off the beach, though not without great difficulty. Scarcely had
they reached it, when that part of the ice from which they had just
escaped burst asunder, and the water, rushing up from beneath, instantly
precipitated it into the ocean. In a moment, as if by a signal, the
whole mass of ice for several miles along the coast, and extending as
far as the eye could reach, began to break up, and to be overwhelmed by
the waves. The spectacle was awfully grand. The immense fields of ice
rising out of the ocean clashing against each other, and then plunging
into the deep with a violence which no language can describe, and with a
noise like the discharge of a thousand cannon, was a sight which must
have filled the most unreflecting mind with feelings of solemnity.

"The Brethren were overwhelmed with amazement at their miraculous
escape, and even the Esquimaux expressed gratitude to God for their
deliverance."

Such is the terrible aspect in which field-ice is seen when broken up
and converted