PARRY'S SECOND VOYAGE. 145 



enjoyed a most gratifying- spectacle. They were at the 

 narrowest part of the strait, here about two miles across, 

 with a tide or current running through it at the rate of 

 two miles an hour. Westward, the shores on each side 

 receded, till, for three points of the compass, and amid 

 a clear horizon, no land was visible. Parry doubted 

 not that from this position he beheld the Polar Sea, 

 into which, notwithstanding the formidable barriers of 

 ice which intervened, he cherished the most sanguine 

 hopes of forcing his way. He named this the Strait of 

 the Fury and Hecla. 



He now lost no time in returning to the ships, where 

 his arrival was very seasonable ; for the opposing bar- 

 rier, which had been gradually softening and breaking 

 into various rents and fissures, at once almost entirely 

 disappeared, and the vessels next morning were in 

 open water. On the 21st they got under weigh, and, 

 though retarded by fogs and other obstructions, had 

 arrived on the 26th at that central and narrowest chan- 

 nel which the commander had formerly reached. A 

 brisk breeze now sprang up, the sky cleared, they 

 dashed across a current of three or four knots an hour, 

 and sanguinely hoped for an entire success, which 

 would compensate so many delays and disappointments. 



Suddenly, it was announced from the crow's nest 

 that ice, in a continuous field, unmoved from its wintei 

 station, occupied the whole breadth of the channel. In 

 an hour they reached this barrier, which they found 

 soft, porous, and what is termed rotten. Spreading all 

 their canvas, they bore down upon it, and actually forced 

 their way through a space of three or four hundred 

 yards ; but there they stuck, and found their progress 

 arrested by an impenetrable mass. From this point, 

 during the whole season, the ships were unable So 



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