into smaller masses or _floes_. When these lie closely
together the mass is called _pack-ice_; in which shape it usually drifts
away with the southern currents, and, separating as it travels south, is
met with in loose floating masses, of every fantastic form. There is
always, as we have said, a large quantity of floe and pack-ice in the
polar seas, which becomes incorporated with the new ice of the
succeeding winter; and not infrequently whale and discovery ships get
frozen into the pack, and remain there as firmly embedded as if they lay
high and dry on land. When the pack is thus re-frozen, it usually
remains stationary; but there are occasions and circumstances in which
the entire body of a pack drifts slowly southward even during the whole
year; showing clearly that oceanic circulation is by no means arrested
by the icy hand of the hyperborean winter.

A very remarkable drift of this kind is recorded by Captain McClintock
of the _Fox_, which is worthy of being noticed here, as illustrative of
the subject we are now considering and also as showing in a remarkable
manner the awful dangers to which navigators may be exposed by the
disruption of the pack in spring, and the wonderful, almost miraculous,
manner in which they are delivered from imminent destruction.

In attempting to cross Baffin's Bay, by penetrating what is called the
"middle ice," the _Fox_ was beset, and finally frozen in for the winter;
and here, although their voyage may be said to have just commenced, they
were destined to spend many months in helpless inactivity and
comparative peril and privation. Their little vessel lay in the centre
of a field of ice of immense extent; so large, indeed, that they could
not venture to undertake a journey to ascertain its limits. Yet this
field slowly and steadily descended Baffin's Bay during the whole
winter, and passed over no fewer than 1385 statute miles in the space of
242 days, during which period the _Fox_ was firmly embedded in it!

It is with difficulty the mind can form any adequate conception of the
position of those voyagers;--unable to move from their icy bed, yet
constantly drifting over miles and miles of ocean; uncertain as to the
where or the when of their deliverance from the pack; exposed to the
terrible dangers of disrupting ice, and surrounded by the depressing
gloom of the long arctic night.

At length deliverance came; but it came surrounded by terrors. In
February, McClintock wri