358 Discoveries in the Polar Regions. 



o 



it, from the rapid accumulation of ice, through which they were 

 obliged to cut a passage for about three miles. Here the ships 

 were imprisoned during a period of three hundred and ten days, 

 for it was not till the 31st of July, 1820, that the ice began to 

 break. Having sailed again on the 6th of August, they reached 

 the west extremity of Melville's Island in long. 114°, when, 

 owing to the immense and impermeable barriers of ice, further 

 progress became impossible, and the ships, returning through 

 the Polar Sea, Barrow's Straits, and Lancaster Sound, into 

 Baffin's Bay, sailed directly homewards. 



Such is a brief account of the geographical proceedings of 

 Captain Parry, and his brave associates, and of which the an- 

 nexed map will offer some further illustrations. (Plate III.) 



Of the inclemency of the season which our travellers endured 

 during their sojourn in Winter-harbour, we may form some idea 

 from the following facts : 



When the expedition anchored in Winter-harbour, the ther- 

 mometer was at 15° below zero, and, in the course of the en- 

 suing month, it occasionally fell as low as 28° below zero and 

 never rose higher than 17|^° above it. But this was trifling to 

 the occasional cold which frequently attained a depression equal 

 to 50° below zero ; and, in February, the thermometer indi- 

 cated the excessive cold of 65>^ below zero, or 87° below the 

 freezing point of water. 



The mercury in the thermometer was continually frozen (and 

 we understand that the spirit thermometers were some degrees at 

 variance with each other, when cooled down to the lowest 

 point, so that a mean of several of them was taken in the above 

 statement) . A fine opportunity presented itself of ascertaining 

 the characters of solid quicksilver, with which we have hitherto 

 been but very imperfectly acquainted, in consequence of ex- 

 amining it in small masses only, and at a temperature verging 

 upon its point of fusion. We learn that it possesses the cha- 

 racters of a ductile, malleable, and tenacious metal ; that in 

 these respects it appears to rank between tin and lead ; that it 

 becomes brittle and easily frangible when near its melting point; 

 and that a piece, of the size of a walnut dropped into a tumbler 



