DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 423 



himself, he related that whilst struggling with the snow* 

 storm he felt a chill, and then a fit came on, during 

 which he imagined people came close to him ; he had 

 partially recovered, and, discovering a track, had nearly 

 reached the tent-door, when he was overtaken by 

 another fit, and had sunk down, a yard from the tent- 

 door, in the attitude of supplication in which he was 

 found. Had not one of the hunters looked out of the 

 door by chance, he must have been frozen to death in 

 that position, within a yard of a place of refuge ! 



There was great joy on board the Investigator from 

 the 10th to the 14th of July, 1851. The floe had com- 

 menced breaking up, and on the 17th the good ship cast 

 off, only, however, to be caught in the pack-ice, and 

 once more drifted with the crushing floes against tW 

 cliffs of Princess Royal Island. Finally she drifted to 

 the tantalizing distance of twenty-five miles from the 

 waters of Barrow's Strait. Further than that, no effort 

 could advance the ship ; the young ice at nights had 

 already begun to form again, the sun once more set at 

 night, the pack-ice closed up the exit, and M'Clure was 

 obliged to give the passage up as a hopeless thing, and 

 to retrace his steps, in order that, by going round by the 

 south of Banks's Land, he might try and reach Melville 

 Island from that direction. 



It was a truly grievous position to be placed in, to be 

 within some thirty miles of a clear sea, winch, had they 

 once been able to pass into, they could have reached 

 England the same summer, and to have to ''.urn back 

 with the prospect of another winter in the polar regions. 

 But the ice was as inexorable as if the Isthmus of Pan- 

 ama had stood between them and the Atlantic ; and there 

 was no help for it. At first matters went on well, in 

 their southerly progress ; not a particle of ice was met 

 \vith. Floes, hummocks, and the huge piles of ice that 

 fringed the coast, had alike disappeared. 



