102 Our North Land. 



carnival of the elements. Great pans of solid blue ice were smashed 

 into pieces and ground up like corn between mill-stones. The pans 

 had been driven so closely together by wind and tide that there 

 was not room for them to swing out of the ship's way, and their 

 strength, although they were often six and eight, and sometimes 

 twenty-five feet thick, and twenty by fifty yards in superficial 

 measurement, was not sufficient, except in two or three instances, to 

 stop the ship. In the jamming and smashing consequent great 

 pieces were often driven upwards on their ends, and thrown with 

 great force against each other. In such cases the havoc was fearful 

 to look upon. On several occasions the martingale and guys nar- 

 rowly escaped being torn away. 



As far as the eye could see, from Nottingham to Digges's Islands 

 on the south coast, some forty miles, the field ice lay wedged in 

 tight and fast, covered with four or five inches of newly fallen snow, 

 while to the west and north lay the bleak, barren rock3, covered 

 here and there with liberal stretches of perpetual snow, of Notting- 

 ham and Salisbury Islands. This wild place, this inhospitable 

 island Nottingham, was to be the home, for a year or more, of Mr. 

 C. V. De Boucherville and his men. It ought to have been called 

 " De Boucherville's Disgust," for he looked upon it, if one may be 

 allowed to judge by his countenance on that occasion, with feelings 

 of unmitigated disgust; and I am sure that it required a lively 

 exercise of all his nerve power, of which he possesses a liberal store , 

 to reconcile himself to this voluntary exile. 



As soon as we had come to anchor, a number of us landed and 

 selected a place for the buildings. The harbour proved to be a 

 very good one, and the place was duly named Port De Boucherville. 

 The whole coast, as far as we could judge at ebb tide, was alive 

 with a great variety of ducks. In about half an hour Mr. Lane, the 

 interpreter, with his kayak and gun, bagged twenty of them. 



While on shore, about five o'clock, I observed from the high 

 rocks, about half way between where we stood and the cliffs of Cape 

 Wolstenholme, forms which I took to be vessels. I immediately 

 called Lieut. Gordon's attention to them, and he, upon looking, came 

 to the same conclusion. We had no glasses with us and could not 



