WINTER QUARTERS. 101 



board at this early achievement. It was doubtless regarded as a happy omen of future 

 successes. 



At the northern entrance of Robeson Channel the breadth of navigable water became 

 much contracted, until off Cape Sheridan the ice was observed to be touching the shore. 

 In Robeson Channel, except where the cliffs rose precipitously from the sea, and afforded 

 no ledge or step on which the ice could lodge, the shore-line was noted to be fronted, at 

 a few paces distance, by a nearly continuous ragged-topped " ice-wall," from fifteen to 



WINTER ClUARTERS OF THE " DISCOVERY." 



thirty-five feet high. It was broken only off the larger ravines. After proceeding some 

 distance north it became evident that their sailing season was rapidly coming to an end. 

 Captain Nares, after a thorough investigation, found that he had to winter in a somewhat 

 exposed place, no harbour being available. He had rounded the north-east point of Grant 

 Land, but instead of finding a continuous coast-line, leading far towards the north, as 

 expected, found himself on the border of an apparently extensive sea, with impenetrable ice 

 on every side. The ice was of most unusual age and thickness, resembling in a marked 

 degree, both in appearance and formation, low floating icebergs rather than ordinary salt- 

 water ice. It has now been termed the " Sea of Ancient Ice." Whereas ordinary ice is 

 usually from two feet to ten feet in thickness, that in the Polar Sea, in consequence of 

 having so few outlets by which to escape to the southward in any appreciable quantity, 



