FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN EXPEDITION 273 



fast to it. A great mass which they ascertained extended down- 

 wards for forty-eight feet below the surface of the sea was selected, 

 and with heavy cables the "Investigator" was made secure to it. 

 Throughout the winter she remained moored to it, though not 

 without more than one experience of danger. 



These experiences were repeated at the breaking of the ice on 

 the coming of spring, the "Investigator" drifting towards a shoal 

 upon which a huge mass of ice was stranded. For a time the ship 

 was in imminent danger of being crushed, a peak of ice thirty feet 

 high hanging perpendicularly above her and threatening each 

 moment to fall. Fortunately the suspense was relieved by a mass 

 falling from the great bulk in another direction, while the pressure 

 on the floe carried it away from the ship. Later on the "Investiga- 

 tor" was in peril of being caught between the grounded mass and 

 the moving floe, in which case she would inevitably have been 

 crushed. A blast of powder, which cracked the ice, relieved the 

 strain, and the vessel escaped without serious injury, though several 

 sheets of her copper sheathing were stripped off and rolled up like 

 scraps of paper. Progress, however, was slow, the only open water 

 being near the land, beyond which the pack ice was heavy and close. 



They rounded Cape Lambton on Banks' Land, a promontory 

 which they found rose a thousand feet precipitously. The land 

 beyond gradually lost the bold character of the rugged cape, the 

 island presenting a view of hills in the interior which gradually 

 sloped to the shore, having fine valleys and extensive plains, over 

 and through which several small and one considerable sized stream 

 flowed. A great deal of drift-wood lay along the beach, and the 

 land was covered with verdure upon which large flocks of geese 

 were feeding, while ducks were flying 1 in great numbers. Two small 

 islands were passed off the coast, one of which afforded an example 

 of the force exerted by a drifting Polar Sea ice-floe. The island rose 

 about forty feet above the surface of the sea, and broken masses of 

 ice, which had formed a floe, had been driven entirely over it. 

 it 



