34 IN THE ICE. 



1824. We Imng on until after noon on the 11th, 

 August, being unwiUing to quit our floe, which was 

 the largest yet seen, and on which as the 

 weather was tolerably fine, we were enabled 

 to stretch lines for the purpose of drying 

 clothes, ^c, which was now very requisite, as 

 from the continual wet weather we had expe- 

 rienced, the ship and every thing within her 

 had become very damp. We also sent our 

 ponies, ducks, geese, and fowls on the ice, 

 which in the forenoon presented a most novel 

 appearance ; the officers shooting looms as 

 they flew past, and the men amusing them- 

 selves with leap frog and other games, while 

 the ship lay moored with her sails loose in 

 readiness to quit our floating farm-yard by the 

 earliest opportunity. A slack in the ice, and a 

 fresh north-vvcst wind, enabled us, at thirty 

 minutes after two, to make sail and work along 

 shore. I observed that the larger bergs were 

 here but little affected by the tide, which, from 

 its merely operating on the floe-ice, must be 

 more superficial than at the entrance of the 

 strait. In the evening the wind fell light, and 

 the refraction became greater than I ever re- 

 member to have seen it before, for it was not 

 confined to a particular portion of the horizon, 



