262 Our North Land, 



In this connection, although more will be said upon the subject 

 farther on, I desire to point out the inefficiency of the observing 

 stations that have been located upon the shores of the Strait, to 

 determine anything concerning the character or movements of the 

 ice beyond a distance of ten miles at the most, seaward, from their 

 several positions. The observer may see as far as his glass will 

 carry his vision, and that will not exceed ten miles in any case, 

 naught but ice, hills of ice, mountains of ice if you please, covered 

 with many feet of snow; while ten miles further out the blue waters 

 of the stronger currents may be smiling defiance to the lowest 

 temperature. Do not understand me as underrating the value of 

 these observing stations. They will collect information of a meteoro- 

 logical and magnetic character of great usefulness, but they cannot 

 settle the one great question : how many months the Strait is 

 navigable. That can only be known by actual experience — by 

 sending out a suitable steam vessel, in command of a man experi- 

 enced in ice, year after year, earlier and later each year ; until finally, 

 when the country has gained the courage to send such an expedi- 

 tion early enough, you will find the ship going in and coming out 

 in April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and 

 November, meeting with more ice in July and August than in any 

 of the other months of the eight that I have named. 



But it is unnecessary to show that the main channels of the Strait 

 are free of local ice during these eight months, in order to prove 

 that the navigation is practicable for that period. Not at all ; on 

 the contrary, they may be more or less filled for the whole time, 

 — which they are not — and still the navigation is eminently practi- 

 cable. It is quite impossible for one who has not witnessed it to 

 imagine, from anything one can write, the difference between steam 

 and sail navigation in ice-floes. The sailing vessel falls a prey to 

 the ice of her own weakness. If there is a calm, and a stretch of 

 ten or twenty miles of ice is approaching her with the tide, she 

 cannot avoid it, and is soon fastened within its pans, to be carried 

 to and fro in its course until a favourable wind enables her to work 

 a tedious passage to the open water. A sailing vessel can neither 

 avoid the ice, nor force a way through it, when overtaken by it. 



