XT.] ICE ALL ROUND. 203 



over to the Greenland shore, on a due west course, and 

 not to attempt to make any southing, until we should have 

 struck the Greenland ice. The length of our tether in that 

 direction being ascertained, we could then judge of the 

 width of the channel down which we were to beat, for it 

 was still blowing pretty fresh from the southward. 



Up to the evening of the day on which we quitted English 

 Bay, the weather had been most beautiful ; calm, sunshiny, 

 dry, and pleasant. Within a few hours of our getting under 

 weigh, a great change had taken place, and by midnight it 

 had become as foggy and disagreeable as ever. The sea 

 was pretty clear. During the few days we had been on 

 shore, the northerly current had brushed away the great 

 angular field of ice which had lain off the shore, in a north- 

 west direction ; so that instead of being obliged to run up 

 very nearly to the 80th parallel, in order to round it, we 

 were enabled to sail to the westward at once. During the 

 course of the night, we came upon one or two wandering 

 patches of drift ice, but so loosely packed that we had no 

 difficulty in pushing through them. About four o'clock in 

 the morning, a long line of close ice was reported right 

 a-head, stretching south as far as the eye could reach. 

 We had come about eighty miles since leaving Spitzbergen. 

 The usual boundary of the Greenland ice in summer runs, 

 according to Scoresby, along the second parallel of west 

 longitude. This we had already crossed ; so that it was to 

 be presumed the barricade we saw before us was a frontier 

 of the fixed ice. In accordance, therefore, with my pre- 

 determined plan, we now began working to the southward, 

 and the result fully justified my expectations. 



The sea became comparatively clear, as far as could be 

 seen from the deck of the vessel ; although small vagrant 

 patches of ice that we came up with occasionally — as well 

 as the temperature of the air and the sea — continued to 

 indicate the proximity of larger bodies on either side of us. 



It was a curious sensation with which we had gradually 

 learnt to contemplate this inseparable companion : it had 



