187fl POLAR PACK. 233 



clear of snow by the wind, once again gladdened our 

 eyes with their dark brown colours. Inhabitants 

 of southern climes, suddenly transported to such a 

 scene, would doubtless have pronounced it the very 

 acme of desolation ; but to our eyes, wearied with ever- 

 present whiteness, these sad-coloured rocks and dingy 

 precipices seemed to reflect hues of extraordinary 

 beauty. 



' We obtained a very fine view of the pack for a 

 distance of six miles from the land. The southern side 

 of each purely white snow- covered hummock was 

 brilliantly lighted by the orange-tinted twilight. The 

 stranded floebergs lining the shore extended from half 

 to three-quarters of a mile off the land. Outside were 

 old floes with undulating upper surfaces separated 

 from each other by Sherard Osborn's "hedge rows 

 of Arctic landscape " or barriers of pressed up ice of 

 various height and breadth. It will be as difficult to 

 drag a sledge over such ice as to transport a carriage 

 directly across country in England. 



' When looking down on this icy sea, one of my 

 companions remarked how impossible it was to realize 

 that water would ever exist there again.' 



During the following spring I arranged with 

 Captain Stephenson that the three ice-quartermasters 

 belonging to the ' Discovery,' men experienced in "the 

 ice navigation of Baffin s Bay, should visit the 'Alert,' 

 to see for themselves the Polar ice. So completely 

 was the ship entrapped and surrounded by an ap- 

 parently massive wall of floebergs and the heavy 

 Polar pack, that they exclaimed — ' She'll ne'er get out 

 of that.' With such a view before them the expression 



