A FROZEN SUMMER. 397 



looking at the surroundings would feel inclined to be- 

 lieve that no life existed but his own. On such occa- 

 sions I go a little distance off and ruminate over our 

 past, and wonder as to our future ; but to-night the si- 

 lence was so painful as to easily induce me to go back 

 to the cabin where my ow^n kind could be seen and 

 their voices heard. 



The running of the water over the floes in long lanes 

 has made regular sluice ways through which the melt- 

 ings run to find the sea-level. Our old sounding hole, 

 about one hundred yards on the starboard quarter, 

 offers an access to the sea, and several streams have 

 scoured a way or had a way made for them. This run- 

 ning water has wasted the ice away until at the edges 

 of the hole it is but two feet thick, and covered with 

 six inches of water swirling about like a maelstrom. 

 Through this we can see the seeming black cavern be- 

 low, and in the monotony which hangs around us I 

 almost feel tempted to jump down it to see where it 

 goes to. 



July 8th, Thursday/. — I have hereinbefore men- 

 tioned that the greatest thickness of a single floe seen 

 by us was seven feet ten inches, or say roughly eight 

 feet. When, after ramming the ship through forty 

 miles of leads last September, she was finally brought 

 up, I pushed her into a crevice between two heavy 

 floes which we subsequently found to be thirteen feet 

 in thickness. I think this great depth was caused by 

 the overriding of one floe on another, and regelation 

 under pressure having taken place, the two became 

 united as one mass. Mr. Dunbar, in his several tramps, 

 has met ice which he describes as " so deep that you 

 could now see how deep it was." This being rather 

 vague, I directed him to-day to take with him a line, 



