70 Our North Land. 



writer — turned in, sick enough, and wished themselves back to 

 Canada. 



Sunday morning brought us no improvement. The weather 

 was still thick and the seas running high. We sighted land again, 

 and coasted along for some time ; but the storm was too heavy to 

 venture near enough to the coast to look for a harbour. By nine 

 o'clock a blinding snow-storm set in from the south-east, and our 

 condition was gloomy enough. In the midst of these adverse cir- 

 cumstances, Lieutenant Gordon decided to cancel that station (to be 

 located on Resolution) for the time being, at any rate, and gave 

 orders to push on toward the Upper Savages, where, at North 

 Bluff, station number three was to be located. 



At ten o'clock on Monday we sighted the dreaded enemy of the 

 navigator in the Hudson Strait — field-ice. From a distance it 

 did not look very formidable. There was only a snow-white streak 

 on the horizon, extending from the 'Middle Savages out into the 

 Strait, as far as the eye, aided by a powerful telescope, could see, 

 and, for at least twenty miles, perhaps much farther. There was 

 one compensation to be derived from these ice-floes. As we ap- 

 proached them the swell subsided, and close to the water was as 

 smooth as glass. 



But if this field-ice was powerful enough to subside the waves 

 it was also able to reduce our speed, although the Neptune steamed 

 through it something after the fashion of a Grand Trunk snow- 

 plough in a Canadian snow-drift. 



This strip of ice, about three miles wide, was not very solid, and 

 but little difficulty was experienced in making our way through it. 

 The operation, however, to those who experienced it for the first 

 time, was very exciting. Great blocks or pans were split or smashed 

 into pieces as if mere glass shells. In some instances they were 

 borne down under the ship's keel, and held there to midships, when 

 they would shoot up on one side, or, if broken, on both sides, rising 

 fifteen or twenty feet above the water, only to fall back again, 

 crushing to pieces other masses of the same material. 



For some three miles the good ship went smashing and tearing 

 and crushing through this mass of ice, like a vast machine of des- 



