552 LAST VOYAGE OF FRANKLIN. 



that they broke out of their winter quarters, as soon as 

 the season would allow, and pursued their adventurous 

 voyage, as we suppose, down Peel Sound. This must 

 have been at some time between the 3d of April and 1st 

 of September, 1846. Probably it was in July or August. 

 It can hardly have been so late as September, for on the 

 12th of that month we find the Erebus and Terror beset 

 far to the southward, in kit. 70 8', Ion. 98 23'. In that 

 position, which is about twelve miles due north of Cape 

 Felix, they passed the winter of 1846-7. 



One of those impenetrable ice-streams which flow 

 down from the vast unknown sea, lying north and west 

 of the Parry Islands, passes between Melville and 

 Banks's Lands, and, impinging with fearful force upon 

 the exposed western shores of Prince of Wales's Land 

 and the islands across Barrow's Straits, is fairly blocked 

 up in the narrows about King William's Land. Sir 

 James Ross, standing on Cape Felix, in May, 1830, 

 remarked with astonishment the fearful nature of this 

 oceanic ice. lie mentions that in some places the pres- 

 sure had driven the floes inland half a mile beyond the 

 highest tide mark ! 



Such were the terrible winter quarters of those lone 

 barks and their gallant crews ; and if that season of 

 monotony was trying to them in Beechey Island, where 

 they could in some measure change the scene by trav- 

 elling in one direction or the other, how infinitely more 

 so it must have been with nothing around them but ice- 

 hummock and floe-piece, with the ships constantly sub- 

 jected to pressure and ice-nip, and often in danger of 

 being engulfed in some awful tempest, when the ice- 

 fields would rear and crush one again '*' +v e other, under 

 that tremendous pressure from the nortn-wefc. 



Yet, in the midst of all these perils, by tne aid o^ 

 very expedient of labor and amusement which Sir John 



