Ice

“ They ate dinner high in the air, while sailing over a great stretch of whiteness, where the snow lay many feet deep on the level, and where great mountain crags were so covered with the glistening mantle and a coating of ice as to resemble the great bergs that float in the polar sea. ”

“ The snow is now melted, and the blue sea-ice lies bare, scarcely tinged with red by the setting sun. Even the long winter night possesses its artistic charm from the midday arch of light, or the moon, which changes the channels beneath into rivers of silver. ”

“ Even in the summer these enormous quantities of ice and snow produce a local winter, all the more curious from the contrast, for side by side with the gloomy glacier, with its great gaping crevices, its collection of stones, its terrible silence, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and fruit ripens. It is like death and life. ”

“ It is not in language to express the savage naked beauty, the wild mystery of the white still scene of ice, shining back to the stars with a light that owed nothing to their glory; nor convey how the whole was heightened to every sense by the element of fear, put into the picture by the sounds of the splitting ice, and the softened regular roaring of the breakers along the coast. ”

“ We next sprang on the ice, the tossing, tremulous motion of which literally filled the air with noises as of shrieks and howls, and we quietly got on board all the materials which were lying on the floe, and bound the fissures of the ice hastily together by ice-anchors and cables, filling them up with snow, in the hope that frost would complete our work, though we felt that a single heave might shatter our labors. ”

“ To view the solid phalanxes of icy floes, as they fill the mountain fastnesses and imperceptibly march through the ravines and force their way to the sea, fills one with awe indescribable. The knowledge that the ice is moving from beneath one's feet thrills one with a curious sensation hard to portray. ”

“ Ice, in broad, deep cakes, or low piled up hummocks, or occasional castellated ice hills carrying stones upon their surface, appear over the wave-scurried waters, and now and then from some concealed inlet, a rude dug-out moves cautiously, piloted by strong arms, crossing between the struggling fragments of ice to gain, in a series of hesitating advances, the opposite shore. ”

“ In a large circle surrounding the ship, the surface of the pack was everywhere heaving up into a ring of rugged mountains high above the level of the sea! Huge masses of ice, large as ocean liners, pitched and rolled on the crests, while reverberating from all about came a shrieking and a screeching from the [Pg 161] tumbling ice that froze the very marrow in our bones. ”

“ Imagine yourself, dear reader, on the edge of a lofty table-land, which, dipping suddenly at your feet, sloped again to the sea of ice, at a distance of some 500 feet below; fancy a vast plain of ice and snow, diversified by tiers of broken-up ice and snow-wreaths, which, glistening on the one side, reflected back the moonlight with an exceeding brilliancy, whilst the strong shadow on the farther side of the masses threw them out in strong relief ”

“ The deserts flowered again, but the frost would come always to bite the tiny crops. For still the Ice came. All the world now, but for a narrow strip about the equator, was one great silent desolate vista of stark ice-plains, ice that brooded above the hidden ruins of cities that had endured for hundreds of thousands of years. It was terrible to imagine the awful solitude and the endless twilight that lay on these places, and the grim snow, sailing in silence over all.... ”

“ The expanding, shearing, breaking force of forming ice, the constant cutting of emery-edged running water, and the undermining thaw of spring sent thundering downward with ten thousand varying echoes a half-million tons of snow, ice, and stones. ”

“ The snow disappears with a marvellous rapidity. The ice, that was like granite in hardness and several feet thick on the great lakes, becomes dark and porous, and in spots literally seems to rot away. ”

“ We saw an immense field of flat ice before us, broken into many small pieces on the edges, a vast number of islands of ice of all shapes and sizes rose beyond it as far as the eye could reach, and some of the most distant considerably raised by the hazy vapours which lay on the horizon, had indeed some appearance of mountains. ”

“ Balanced around its heart, far down in the deep, and in its cold solidity “dry as summer dust”—poised upon its centre with perfect exactness, it is evident that the loss of a single ton of ice shifts that centre, shifts it an ounce-notch on the bar of the mighty scale, destroys the equilibrium, and subjects the whole to the necessity of some small movement in order to regain its rest. ”

“ The ice has thawed into dark pools on either side, and snow has fallen on what remains. He has strapped his bundle and stick at his back, and, with the foresight taught of necessity in those bridgeless days, is astride upon a long bough, so that if by any chance the ice gives way, or he plumps into some hidden fissure, he may still have hope of safety. ”

“ Water, tumbling as snow, hardens into ice, and rasps away continually at the surfaces of the mountains. Rivers scrape off, and carry away with them, every particle of earth that they meet with on their journey to the sea. ”

“ All day we go under steam through the ice-floes, on each quarter a different effect—north-east there is dark cloud, with an ice-blink, a light streak on the clouds telling of a field of pack ice—ahead there is darker lilac sky, telling of open water, to our left and the south-west there is white ice and white sky, blending in a blur of soft light, so we know there is endless ice there. ”

“ The Ice was here, the Ice was there,
The Ice was all around:
It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd—
Like noises of a swound. ”

“ This viscosity of ice is displayed on a grand scale in glaciers, the ice of which actually flows like a river down the glacier valley, contracting as the valley narrows and spreading out as it widens, just as a river would; but moving only a few inches daily according to the steepness of the slope and the season, slower in winter than in summer. ”

“ The weather now determines the lot of the ice dealer. As the cold breezes whistle over the water, stirring it into ripples, and breaking its surface into waves, a wonderful change is rapidly transforming its liquid pearls into flinty diamonds. Gradually the heat in the water is radiated into the air. As fast as the surface water is cooled, it is condensed, and sinks to the bottom, its place being taken by the warmer and lighter water from beneath. ”

“ You recollect none of these things. Ice and snow are to you mere playthings; and you long for winter, that you may make snowballs and play hockey and skate upon the ponds, and eat ice like a foolish boy till you make your stomach ache. ”

“ The ice was split in two and the huge floes heaped up into towering icebergs. The snow fell and drifted over meadow and hill; sky and earth were blended into one. It was piercingly cold, and where the snow had been blown away the ground was hard as stone.
[Pg 373] The Prince of Winter stood in the valley and looked upon all this with content. He went into the forest, where the snow was frozen to windward right up to the tips of the smooth beech-trunks; but in the boughs of the fir-trees it lay so thick that they were weighted right down to the ground. ”

“ When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider’s web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre. ”

“ On warm days when the sun shines, thawing proceeds everywhere, and the water trickles, bubbles, and runs all about the ice. But if the weather is dull, cold, and raw, the glaciers are quieter, and when winter comes with its severe cold they are quite hard and still, and the brooks freeze into ice. ”

“ It is, therefore, when the water is clear, and the sky free from clouds, that ground ice forms most readily, and oftener on pebbly than on muddy bottoms. Fragments of such ice, rising occasionally to the surface, bring up with them gravel, and even large stones. ”

“ Separating and going in different directions, the three hunted about in the vain hope that somewhere on the ice there might be seals that they could kill, but nowhere was there to be seen a living thing—nothing but one vast field of ice reaching to the horizon on the north, east and south. ”

“ The further we approached towards the south in making our easting, the more plainly did the ice exhibit the powerful effect of the sun's irresistible beams, by its being greatly reduced in quantity, and by the snow upon its surface lying in a state of dissolution. ”

“ The immense ice-islands, or icebergs, which float about in summer in the polar regions, by melting irregularly often change the place of their centre of gravity, and in turning over present one of the most sublime spectacles in nature. A mountain of ice, extending high in the air and deep in the sea, suddenly turns over, and produces a rolling of the ocean which is often felt at the distance of many leagues. ”

“ And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. ”

“ It was winter--cold and snow and ice and naked trees and leaden clouds and stinging wind. ”

“ “Here I sit in the still winter night on the drifting ice-floe, and see only stars above me. Far off I see the threads of life twisting themselves into the intricate web which stretches unbroken from life’s sweet morning dawn to the eternal death-stillness of the ice. Thought follows thought—you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small—but high above all towers one form.... Why did you take this voyage?... Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. ”

“ These pieces or masses of ice are pushed towards the shore, and there the ice first begins to make a firm covering over the sea.
‘But the ice on the sea is never smooth or even, like the ice on a pond or on a river; it is rough, and large pieces are heaped together, and large cracks are often made in the ice by the wind and the waves moving it, which makes it dangerous to drive or even walk a long distance over the Frozen Sea.’
‘Can people drive over the sea? ”

“ But, perchance, this Author believes, that Nature imploys Wind as a Hand, and the Cold air as a Spoon, to beat Ice like the white of an Egg into a froth of Snow. But the great quantity of Snow, in many places, doth prove, that Snow is not made of the fragments of Ice, but that some sorts of cold contractions on a watery body, make the figure of snow in the substance of water, as other sorts of cold contractions make the figure of ice ”

“ I was afraid, at first; for the rising tide, lifting up those great blocks of ice, cracks them in many places, and the water, splashing up on the banks of the river, makes a thin layer of ice over the thicker one. When you try walking upon the thin ice, it breaks under you. ”

“ We foretell a hard winter, and, before it is half gone, become nervous lest we should miss our supply of ice. The fly, the murrain, the potato-rot, and the grasshoppers, all have a divine office in tipping over our calculations. ”

“ You are doing to it just what happens when a glacier is formed out of the eternal snows. You are pressing out the air, and allowing the little particles of ice to freeze to each other and form a compact piece of ice. ”

“ On the other hand a blue streak on the horizon, denoting open water, is called a water sky. A lane or lead is a narrow track of open water between floes or pack ice. Rotten ice is old ice partially melted, and in part honeycombed. ”

“ The upper layer of this first surface of ice being elevated above the surface of the sea, will receive all the fresh water which falls from the atmosphere in the form of snow, sleet, rain or dew, by the successive congelation of which, the largest fields of ice may at length be formed.
It is a matter of little consequence to a navigator, whence the ice which supplies him with fresh water is produced. ”

“ Frost, Ice, Snow and Hail, do not proceed from the coldness of the air, but rather the coldness of the air proceeds from them; for Ice, Snow, and Hail, proceed from cold contraction and condensation of a vaporous or watery substance; and, as Frost and Snow cause air to be cold, so Thunder and Lightning cause it to be hot, so long as they last. ”

“ Ice, ice, ice, but everywhere in blocks smiting each other, rolling, rocking, jamming, and 105all together crying aloud in a jargon of groans, shivers, reports, grumbles, growls, like packs of quarreling dogs or wolves. ”

“ The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie nestled in glacier wombs. At first sight, they seem pictures of pure bloodless desolation, miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and snow, and overshadowed by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. ”

“ It is supposed by those who have never seen the infinite variety of forms into which frost converts mist and dew and all manner of water, that there must be a monotony in those vast expanses of snow and ice. ”

“ Then the long range of ice-bluffs is plainly seen stretching through the gloom in weird, unearthly splendor, luminous wave foam dashing against every bluff and drifting berg; and ever and anon amid all this wild auroral splendor some huge new-born berg dashes the living water into yet brighter foam, and the streaming torrents pouring from its sides are worn as robes of light, while they roar in awful accord with the winds and waves, deep calling unto deep, glacier to glacier, from fiord to fiord over all the wonderful bay. ”

“ Snow, however, in the event of soft or warm weather, is an aid to the ice by protecting it from the direct heat of the sun, and the force of a rain is largely expended in melting the snow. The water and snow on the top of the ice freezes into snow ice as soon as the weather turns cold again. ”