1853.] TIDAL RENTS TROUBLESOME. 257 



Our course is now directed to a low point to the east- 

 south-east, surmounted by a very remarkable mount, 

 about a mile and a half within. The included segment 

 between this and the outer point of Princess Royal 

 Island forms a deep bay, evidently much cut up by nu- 

 merous streamlets, flowing from extensive lakes, convert- 

 ing the entire space, if thawed, into one immense series 

 of flats, mostly even with the surface : there is there- 

 fore at present no chance of sinking into this " mud flat 

 floe." Upon this line of mischief, as all shoal lines are 

 (" dangers" hydrographic), the pack ice was of course 

 compelled to observe " the rules," and within it we ob- 

 tained smooth, but, when cracked, slightly impeded, tra- 

 velling. But to make this matter clear, and to mark 

 this species of travel, it is requisite to bear in mind, that 

 notwithstanding the incomprehensible masses of floe-ice 

 which cover the Polar Sea as with a mere tablecloth of 

 varied fabric, coarse or fine, that the great laws of na- 

 ture, the tidal influences, cannot be arrested. The huge 

 floe must obey the law of floatation : it rises, cracks, falls 

 possibly below, or is supported by some interposed sub- 

 stance above, the so-called land-floe, which refuses to 

 move (possibly in our case because it cannot) ; is frozen 

 to the bottom : a gap is left, filled in with light snow, 

 and one very fatal to sledge runners, and uncomfortable 

 to those who have no serviceable legs left, by finding the 

 hips nearly engulfed in these cracks, chasms more pro- 

 perly. It is therefore advisable to keep inside these 

 traps, and rather observe the parallel contour of the 

 land, or where the ice is solid, than to contend for short 

 cuts over hummocky ice or frozen pack. I have thus 



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