Saturday, July 2nd. This day the sun rose fair, but it ran too low
in the heavens to give any heat, or thaw out our sails and rigging;
yet the sight of it was pleasant; and we had a steady "reef topsail
breeze" from the westward. The atmosphere, which had previously been
clear and cold, for the last few hours grew damp, and had a
disagreeable, wet chilliness in it; and the man who came from the
wheel said he heard the captain tell "the passenger" that the
thermometer had fallen several degrees since morning, which he could
not account for in any other way than by supposing that there must
be ice near us; though such a thing had never been heard of in this
latitude, at this season of the year. At twelve o'clock we went below,
and had just got through dinner, when the cook put his head down the
scuttle and told us to come on deck and see the finest sight that we
had ever seen. "Where away, cook?" asked the first man who was up. "On
the larboard bow." And there lay, floating in the ocean, several miles
off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow,
and its center of a deep indigo color.
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