1787. LOWENORN, EGEDE, AND ROTHE. 335 



would have been obliged to pass the winter in 

 Greenland, for which they were not at all pre- 

 pared. Besides, they hoped to find less ice 

 towards the north, and that they might perhaps 

 discover some land in the neighbourhood of the 

 bay of ice in which they had been on the 2d July. 

 On the 7th, in latitude 65° 21', longitude 30° 30', 

 at 120 miles from Snoefell Jokul, they fancied 

 again that they saw an extended ridge of rocks,, 

 but it proved only a chain of ice-mountains ; 

 at the same time, towards the west, they dis- 

 cerned the ice blink, nearly in the same place 

 where they were on the 2d July. On the 8th, 

 proceeding easterly, they constantly observed, in 

 a northerly direction, mountains of ice and the 

 ice-blink, and passed between some floating 

 islands of ice. Fearful that the masses of ice still 

 coming down from the northward might fill up 

 the whole of the sea between Greenland and 

 Iceland, so that it could not be navigated, they 

 preferred returning to Iceland, from which they 

 were then only about sixty miles, and to make 

 another attempt to discover the east coast of 

 Greenland when the northerly winds and the curr 

 rent should have drifted the ice to the southward. 

 Accordingly on the 12th June they entered the 

 port of Dyrefjord. 



All the accounts thev received here confirmed 

 them in the opinion that there was more ice than 

 usual this year, and that it would not float away 



