344 VEXATIOUS IMPEDIMENTS. 



were here detained for tliree days of very great 

 discomfort, having landed on a low, marshy spot, 

 with no other shelter than sieve-like tents from 

 melting snow and heavy rains, and with rotten wood 

 only for fires. We got away on the 29th, but the 

 day was expended in toilsome endeavom-s to force a 

 passage tlu"ongh the ice, which lay in flat pieces 

 or fields, several acres in extent, and seven or eight 

 feet thick, or rose in masses twenty or thirty feet 

 high, like so many houses in ruins. 



It is difficult for inexperience to conceive how 

 greatly chilled the wind becomes in its passage over 

 ice. Here, in the month of July, a south breeze, which 

 should have been the softest and warmest exhalation 

 of tEoIus, stagnated the blood by its frost-becharged 

 breath. In the morning we had forced tlu-ough the 

 pack which belted the shore, hoping to find an open 

 sea, and at night succeeded only with great toil and 

 some danger in regaining the land, which was right 

 welcome after our disagreeable day. Nearly sixteen 

 hours in open boats, with thickly diiving fogs which 

 wetted as badly as rain, and encrusted the masts 

 and rigging with ice, while toes and noses com- 

 plained sadly, made us duly appreciate our midnight 

 bivouac. We had now reached Point M'Kinley, 

 upon which was another Esquimaux village, but 



