The large pieces, which broke from the ice islands, were found to be much more dangerous than the islands themselves.

While the latter rose so high out of the water, that they could generally be seen, unless the weather was very thick and hazy, before our people nearly approached them, the others could not be discerned, in the night, till they were under the ship's bows.

These dangers, however, were now become so familiar to the captain and his company, that the apprehensions they caused were never of long duration; and a compensation was, in some degree, made for them, by the seasonable supplies of fresh water, which the ice islands afforded, and by their very romantic appearance.

The foaming and dashing of the waves into the curious holes and caverns which were formed in many of them greatly heightened the scene; and the whole exhibited a view, that at once filled the mind with admiration and horror, and could only be described by the hand of an able painter.
In sailing from the 25th to the 28th, the wind was accompanied with a large hollow sea, which rendered Captain Cook certain, that no land, of any considerable extent, could lie within a hundred or a hundred and fifty leagues from east to south-west.

Though this was still the summer season in that part of the world, and the weather was become somewhat warmer than it had been before, yet such were the effects of the cold, that a sow having farrowed nine pigs in the morning, all of them, notwithstanding the utmost care to prevent it, were killed before four o'clock in the afternoon.