"The snow-covered level upon which Brooks and myself were walking was about thirty paces wide, between the older ice on one side and the encroaching hummock-line on the other. Upon our return, after a walk of a short half mile, we found our footsteps obliterated, and the hummock-line within a few yards of this older ice. Things are changing rapidly.
"A new crack was reported at one o'clock, about the third of a mile from our ship; and the bearings of the sun showed that our brig had, for the first time since entering Baffin's Bay, rotated considerably to the northward. Here were two subjects for examination. So, as soon as dinner was over, I started with Davis and Willie, two of my scurvy henchmen, on a walk to the openings. Reaching the recent crack, we found the ice five feet four inches thick, and the black water, in a clear streak a foot wide, running to the east and west.[G] I had often read of Esquimaux being carried off by the separation of these great floes; but, knowing that our guns could call assistance from the brig, we jumped over and hurried on. We were well paid.
[G] This direction, transverse to the long axis of Baffin's Bay, seems to be that of most of our fissures.
"The hunamockings of this morning had ceased; the wind so gentle as hardly to be perceptible: the lead before me was an open river of water, and in it were narwhals (_M. monoceros_), in groups of five or six, rolling over and over, after the manner of the dolphin tribe. They were near me; so near that I could see their checkered backs, and enjoy the rich coloring that decorates them. The horn, that monodontal process which gives them their name of sea-unicorn, was perfectly examinable. Rising in a spirally indented cone, this beautiful appendage appeared sometimes eight and ten feet out of water; one especially, whose tall curvetings astonished my body-guard. I never saw a more graceful, striking, and beautiful exhibition than the unrestrained play of these narwhals.[H] In the same open water, almost in company with the narwhals, were white whales (_Delphinopterus albicans_, or _Beluga_: these cetacea have so many names, they puzzle me), and seal besides.
[H] I have seen many of these fish since, but never under such circumstances. I stood on a ledge of hummock within short gunshot. The animals were entirely unapprehensive. The non-symmetrical character of the "horn" (an unduly developed tooth, say the naturalists) was not seen; and as this long lance-like process played about at a constantly varying angle, it reminded me of the mast of some sunken boat swayed by the waves.