th of May, 1819, and
having rounded the Orkneys, stood across the Atlantic.  Having contrary
winds, they made but slow progress.  On the 18th of June they first fell
in with icebergs, flying amid which were numberless petrels, kittiwakes,
tarns, and other winged inhabitants of the northern regions.  Some of
these bergs, of which fifty were seen at a time, were of great size.
The heavy southern swell dashed the loose ice with tremendous force
against them, sometimes raising a cloud of white spray, which broke over
their tops to the height of more than a hundred feet, accompanied by a
loud noise, resembling distant thunder.  As the _Hecla_ was drifting on
with a southerly current, she was nearly nipped by a detached floe,
which drove her against a berg aground, one hundred and forty feet high,
where the depth of water was one hundred and twenty fathoms, so that its
whole height must have exceeded eight hundred feet.

Parry at first attempted to force his way north and west, amid the
masses of ice, in the direction of Lancaster Sound; but as the vessels
were sailing on, the floes suddenly closed round them, and on the 25th
both were so completely beset that it was impossible to turn their heads
in any direction.  Here they were fixed, though in no danger, until the
morning of the second day, when the violence of the sea loosening the
ice, it was driven against the ships' sides with such force that, had
they not been strongly built, they would probably have been destroyed.
At this time, from the crow's nest, upwards of eighty-eight enormous
icebergs were seen, besides many smaller ones.  The vessels being at
length freed, Lieutenant Parry came to the resolution of abandoning the
attempt to reach Lancaster Sound by a direct course, and instead steered
northward along the border of the great ice-field, in the hopes of
finding open water farther to the north.  He steered on that course
until he reached latitude 73 degrees, when he resolved upon making a
determined push to the westward.

A favourable breeze springing up,