FIRST GRINNELL EXPEDITION. 349 



mocks, and encountered the most fearful perils. Some* 

 times they auc aored their vessels to icebergs, and some- 

 times to floes aLd to masses of hummock. On one of 

 these occasions, while the cook, an active Frenchman, 

 was upon a berg, making a place for an anchor, the 

 mass of ice split beneath him, and he was dropped 

 through the yawning fissure into the water, a distance 

 of almost thirty feet. Fortunately, the masses, as is 

 often the case, did not close up again, but floated apart, 

 and the poor cook was hauled on board more dead than 

 alive, from excessive fright. It was in this fearful 

 region that they first encountered pack-ice, and there 

 they were locked in from the 7th to the 23d of July. 



\Vliile in this situation they were joined by the British 

 yacht Prince Albert, under Captain Forsyth, and to- 

 gether the three vessels were anchored, for a while, to 

 an immense field of ice, in sight of the Devil's Thumb, a 

 high, roc^y peak, situated in latitude 74 2'2'. It was 

 now about thirty miles distant, and, with the dark hills 

 adjacent, presented a strange aspect where all was 

 white and glittering. The peak and the hills are masses 

 of rock, with occasionally a lichen or a moss growing 

 upon their otherwise naked surfaces. In the midst of 

 the vast ice-field loomed up many lofty bergs, all of them 

 in slow and majestic motion. 



From the Devil's Thumb the American vessels passed 

 onward through the pack toward Sabine's Islands, 

 while the Prince Albert essayed to make a more west- 

 erly course. They reached Cape York at the beginning 

 of August. Far across the ice, landward, they discov- 

 ered, through their glasses, several men, apparently 

 making signals ; and for a while they rejoiced in the 

 belief that they saw a portion of Sir John Franklin's 

 companions. Four men were despatched, with a whale- 

 boat, to leconuoitre. They soon discovered the men to 



