420 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANXETTE. 



possible. When last fall and winter we had our great- 

 est pressures at new and full moon, their regular recur- 

 rence seemed to indicate that tidal action existed, but 

 now the moon has no effect whatever. Full moon or 

 new moon, last quarter or first quarter, the ice is as im- 

 movable as a rock. We are, of course, further north 

 now than we were last winter, and may have got be- 

 yond the Siberian tides, while still south of the tides 

 mentioned further north as ebbing and flowing through 

 McClure Strait. In case this is so we should be in a 

 dead space, and might, like Franklin's ships, never get 

 any further. But what is there to the northward of 

 us? It is hard to believe that an impenetrable barrier 

 of ice exists clear up to the Pole, and yet as far as we 

 have gone we have not seen one speck of land north 

 of Herald Island. 



Our water temperatures and soundings taken daily 

 give no encouragement ; the surface has generally a 

 temperature of 34°, due, of course, to its exposure to 

 the sun and retention for a long time of the heat im- 

 parted. Two fathoms below the surface the tempera- 

 ture is 31°, and at th^bottom 30°. At a temperature 

 of 75° above the freezing point of salt-water, the lower 

 ice cannot melt rapidly. On the surface, the sun's rays, 

 or the cutting fog, or the w^armer water at the edges, 

 make a wasted and rotten material ; but under water 

 the ice has the same flinty hardness it had during mid- 

 winter. And it is of such irregular and varying thick- 

 ness that no idea can be formed of its age or origin. We 

 know that last November, when we were squeezed out 

 of the heavy ice into our present location, we were in 

 open water, — a lake, so to speak. By careful meas- 

 urement we know that ice formed on this lake to a 

 thickness of five feet four inches by February 4th. Then 



