DRIVEN FARTHER OUT. 151 



edge of the pack, while keenly following the 

 fresh track of a bear, in the company of three of 

 the officers, we suddenly came to some gravel 

 evidently thrown up by the lower ice, and look- 

 ing more attentively round, observed that the 

 adjacent ice was in a raised and spherical form, as 

 if resting on a rock or bank of similar shape. 

 The pack was only a few yards from this, and 

 had evidently been arrested by it, as was further 

 demonstrated by a crack about twenty feet from 

 its edge. To get away from the shoal, there- 

 fore, would require an off-shore breeze ; nor was 

 this long wanting, for on the very same night 

 it blew fresh from the westward, and urging 

 the ice along the land, faster than might 

 have been expected in a neap-tide, by the fore- 

 noon of the 18th we had completely rounded 

 the Cape, and were considerably farther out 

 than we had been since the early part of last 

 month. On making an excursion with a small 

 party, I observed that our pack had received ano- 

 ther shock, and that an extensive crack on the side 

 nearest the land was the consequence. Again 

 I saw the same convexity of surface, terminated 

 by huge mounds of splintered fragments amount- 

 ing to hundreds of tons in weight, each piece or 

 fragment, though of this year's ice, being from 

 two to two and a half feet thick. The exist- 

 ence of shoals was manifest, since the pressure 



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