SIB J. C. ROSS'S EXPEDITION. 289 



came down upon them and beset them. During two or 

 three days the heavy masses at times severely squeezed 

 them, and ridges of hummocks were thrown up all 

 around them, and then the temperature fell nearly to 

 zero, and congealed the whole body of ice into a solid 

 mass. The crew of the Enterprise were unable, for 

 some days, to unship the rudder, and when at last they 

 released it, by means of the laborious operation of saw- 

 ing away the hummocks which clove to the stern, they 

 found it twisted and damaged ; and, at the same time, 

 the ship was so much strained as to increase the leakage 

 from three inches in a fortnight to fourteen inches in 

 day. 



The ice now remained for some days stationary. The 

 lighter pieces had been so interlaced and imbricated by 

 pressure, as to form one entire sheet across the whole 

 width of Barrow's Strait, and away eastward and west- 

 ward to the horizon ; and all the blocks and strata below 

 them were so firmly cemented by the extreme severity 

 of the temperature as to seem little likely to break up 

 again that season. The ships appeared fixed for the 

 winter ; and who could tell whether they might not be 

 exposed to a series of as terrific perils as those which 

 BO often menaced the Terror with destruction in her 

 awful ice-voyage of 1836 ? 



On the wind shifting to the west, the crews, with a 

 mixture of hope and anxiety, beheld the whole body 

 of ice beginning to drive to the eastward, at the rate 

 of eight or ten miles a day. They made all possible 

 efforts to help themselves, but made them in vain, for 

 no human power could have moved either of the ships a 

 single inch. The field of ice which held them fast in 

 its centre was more than fifty miles in circumference. 

 It carried them along the south shore of Lancaster 



Sound, and then went down the west side of Baffin's 

 19 



