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KERGUELEN’S VOYAGE TO THE NORTH. 74t
is always a great inftability in the winds; they however moltly blow N.E. and S. E,
‘Thefe three days were employed in reconnoitering the coaft, and in taking bearings, and
making remarks on the dire¢tion of the fhores.
The twenty-firft the wind was W., and not perceiving more than two or three veflels,
I bore N. N. W. to feek the fleet. At ten o’clock inthe morning, fix or feven leagues
from the land, I perceived the fea white before me to the horizon. ‘The two pilots for
thofe coalts which I had on board affured me that this whitenefs was nothing but the
fea itfelf which was frozen. I continued my courfe N. N. W. to take a nearer view,
and getting within half a league of it I fatisfied myfelf, the fea appearing wholly frozen
in one folid mafs, extending from the N. W. of the compafs as far as to the North Cape,
which was at E.S. E. I tackedimmediately to avoid the danger, and warn the fleet of
it. The year before the flrait between Greenland and Iceland had been entirely frozen
over all the f{ummer. I cannot here refrain from making fome reflections on this frozen
fea, and on the mountains of ice which are found on the north fea during voyages from
Europe to North America, and fometimes on doubling cape Horn. Some have been
met with which, like iflands or rather continents, appear to be many leagues in length,
and elevated more than two hundred feet above the furface of the water. How are we
to account for thofe enormous mafles? Every body knows that the total ceffation of
motion in infenfible partieles caufes cold, and that cold is the immediate and true caufe
of the formation of ice; that there are other fubordinate and accidental caufes, fuch as
fpirits of falt and nitre, which, expanded in the air, occafion even in the midit of fum-
mer fuch extreme cold as to freeze lakes and rivers. Thus the north wind in the
northern hemifphere, and the fouth wind in the fouthern hemifphere, contribute to cold
and the forming of ice, becaufe they bring from the poles corpufcles or cold particles,
which penetrating the furfaces of bodies fufpend the motion of the imperceptible par-
ticles. I fhall enter into fome detail to develop the different caufes of cold and ice.
I compute, in the firft place, on the exiftence, as a bafe, of an xtherial matter, ex.
tremely fubtle and active, which furrounds and penetrates in a larger or fmaller degree
all liquid fubftances ; if its motion be leffened, its {pring become weak, fo that it be no
longer able to overcome the refiftance of the integral parts of the liquid (that is, which
caufes the cold), ice will be produced ; thus the formation of ice is the immediate refult
of the diminifhed motion of the fubtle matter which conftitutes fire and heat.
Let us now examine the accidental caufes. Salt, nitre, faltpetre, thefe make up the
firft accidental caufe of the formation of ice. In places where they abound the air be-
comes loaded with them, they penetrate the pores of liquids like fo many {mall wedges,
. they clofe the paflages again{t the entrance of the grofs particles of the fubtile matter,
{top the motion of the imperceptible particles of liquids, and thus harden and convert
them intoice. It is thus that in certain caverns, whofe neighbourhood abounds in nitre,
pyramids of ice are formed, as in a cave near the village of Chaux, five leagues from
Befangon, where three were found in the month of September 1711, of fifteen feet in
height *. Wind I confider to be the fecond caufe of ice.
Many perfons imagine the wind to be an obftacle to the formation of ice ; it is true,
when it has much hold of an extenfive furface of water, as of rivers, lakes, and feas, it
frequently hinders them from freezing while it continues to agitate them, and deprives
the integral parts of the liquid from uniting together, notwith{tanding it is certain that
for the moft part wind ought to accelerate freezing, as Iam about to explain. In cold
weather, approaching to fro{t, a dry wind, fuch as the N. E. in our climate, contributes
* Hiftoire de l’Acad, 1712. p. 22.
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