286 SIR J. C. ROSS'S EXPEDITION. 



but they went with a will to the task. The season was 

 far advanced, and exceedingly unpromising, and seemed 

 clearly to demand the utmost promptitude and strenu- 

 ousness of exertion. At a time when most other navi- 

 gable parts of the Arctic seas were open, Port Leopold 

 continued as close as in the middle of winter. Not a 

 foot of water was to be seen on the surface of the sur- 

 rounding ice, except only along the line of gravel about 

 the harbor's mouth ; and small prospect existed that 

 any natural opening would occur. The crews were 

 obliged to cut a way out with saws. All hands that 

 were at all able went to work, and made a canal two 

 miles in length, and sufficiently wide to let the ships 

 pass outward to the adjacent sound. They did not 

 complete this till the 15th of August, and then had the 

 mortification to see that the ice to seaward remained, to 

 all appearance, as firmly fixed as in the winter. But it 

 was wasting away along the shores, and it soon broke 

 up, and gave promise of a navigable channel. The 

 ships got out of the harbor on the 28th of August, 

 exactly one fortnight less than a twelvemonth from the 

 time when they entered it. 



They proceeded toward the north shore of Barrow's 

 Strait, with the view of making further examination of 

 Wellington Channel, and of scrutinizing the coasts and 

 inlets westward to Melville Island. But they were 

 arrested about twelve miles from the shore by fixed 

 land-ice, which had remained unbroken since the pre- 

 vious season, and which appeared to extend away to 

 the western horizon in a uniform heavy sheet. They 

 were in a loose pack, struggling with blocks and streams 

 as they best could, and they kept hovering about the 

 spot which afforded the greatest probability of an open- 

 ing. But, on the 1st of September, the loose pack was 

 suddenly put in commotion by a strong wind, and it 



