178 PARRY'S POLAR VOYAGE. 



became impatient in the extreme, and formed a plan to 

 push off northward, leaving the ship to find a harbor for 

 herself, where he trusted, on his return, to trace her 

 out. But the survey of the route in the proposed di- 

 rection was most discouraging. In consequence of 

 some violent agitation the preceding season, the ice had 

 been piled up in innumerable hummocks, causing the 

 sea to resemble a stone-mason's yard, except that it 

 contained masses ten times larger. This state of the 

 surface, which would have rendered it impossible to 

 drag the boats more than a mile in the day, was found 

 to prevail for a considerable space with little interrup- 

 tion. 



The current, meantime, continued to carry the ship, 

 with the floe to which she was fastened, slowly to the 

 eastward, till it brought her into shoal water. Parry 

 lowered a boat, and found some heavy masses of ice 

 attached to the bottom in six fathoms ; after which he 

 felt it quite out of the question to leave her with a 

 diminished crew, and exposed to so much danger, aris- 

 ing from the combined difficulty of unsurveyed ground 

 and ice. The conclusion was therefore irresistibly 

 forced upon his mind, that a secure harbor must be 

 sought for the vessel before setting out with the boats. 

 No choice was then left but to steer back for the coast 

 of Spitzbergen, where he unexpectedly lighted on a 

 very convenient recess, named by him Hecla Cove ; and 

 it proved to be part of the bay to which an old Dutch 

 chart gives the name of Treurenberg. 



The animals met with here during the Hecla's stay 

 were principally reindeer, bears, foxes, kittiwakes, 

 glaucous and ivory gulls, tern, eider-ducks, and a few 

 grouse. Looms and rotges were numerous in the offing. 

 Seventy reindeer were killed, chiefly very small, and, 

 until the middle of August, not in good condition 



