80 ARCTIC VOYAGES. Chap. IV. 



size, against which a heavy southerly swell was 

 violently agitated, " dashing the loose ice with 

 tremendous force, sometimes raised a white spray 

 over them to the height of more than one hundred 

 feet, and being accompanied with a loucl noise 

 exactly resembling the roar of distant thunder, pre- 

 sented a scene at once sublime and terrific." Be- 

 tween one of these icebergs and a detached floe, 

 drifting with a southerly current, the Hecla had 

 nearly, as the whalers call it, been f ' nipped ; " that 

 is to say, squeezed flat. The berg was about one 

 hundred and forty feet high, and aground in one 

 hundred and twenty fathoms, so that its whole 

 height probably exceeded eight hundred feet. On 

 the 21st the land, called by Davis ' Hope Sander- 

 son/ and also the ' Woman's Island,' were seen; and 

 " we found ourselves," says Parry, " in the midst 

 of a great number of very high icebergs, of which I 

 counted, from the crow's nest, eighty-eight, besides 

 many smaller ones." 



Having now reached the latitude of 73°, and 

 being unwilling to pass the latitude of Lancaster 

 Sound, Parry determined to make an attempt to 

 pass through the icy barrier, in order to get into the 

 open sea, which the experience of the former voyage 

 induced him to believe he should find on the oppo- 

 site coast ; it took him, however, seven days' sailing, 

 tracking and warping occasionally, to get into open 

 water, the width of the barrier being not less than 



