172 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [XI. 



Phipps had gone, he determined to leave her in a harbour in 

 Spitzbergen, and push across the sea in boats and sledges. 

 The uneven nature of the surface over which they had to 

 travel, caused their progress northward to be very slow, and 

 very laborious. The ice too, beneath their feet, was not 

 itself immovable, and at last they perceived they were 

 making the kind of progress a criminal makes upon the 

 treadmill, — the floes over which they were journeying 

 drifting to the southward faster than they walked north ; so 

 that at the end of a long day's march of ten miles, they 

 found themselves four miles further from their destination 

 than at its commencement. Disgusted with so Irish a 

 manoeuvre, Parry determined to return, though not until he 

 had almost reached the 83rd parallel, a higher latitude than 

 any to which man is known to have penetrated. Arctic 

 authorities are still of opinion, that Parry's plan for reaching 

 the pole might prove successful, if the expedition were to 

 set out earlier in the season, ere the intervening field of ice 

 is cast adrift by the approach of summer. 



Our own run to Bear Island was very rapid. On getting 

 outside the islands, a fair fresh wind sprung up, and we went 

 spinning along for two nights and two days as merrily as 

 possible, under a double-reefed mainsail and staysail, on a 

 due north course. On the third day we began to see some 

 land birds, and a few hours afterwards, the loom of the 

 island itself; but it had already begun to get fearfully cold, 

 and our thermometer, which I consulted every two hours, 

 plainly indicated that we were approaching ice. My only 

 hope was that, at all events, the southern extremity of the 

 island might be disengaged ; for I was very anxious to land, 

 in order to examine some coal-beds which are said to exist 

 in the upper strata of the sandstone formation. This expec- 

 tation was doomed to complete disappointment. Before 

 we had got within six miles of the shore, it became evident 

 that the report of the Hammerfest Sea-horseman was too 

 true. 



Between us and the land there extended an impenetrable 



