Navigation of Hudson's Bay and Strait. 263 



How different it is with a strongly-constructed wooden steam 

 vessel. In many cases she will avoid the ice altogether, by shaping 

 her course to suit the circumstances ; and when it is necessary to 

 penetrate the floes, it will be heavy local ice, indeed, that will reduce 

 her speed below five miles an hour. We passed through a stretch 

 of local ice, off Prince of Wales Sound in the steamship Neptune, and 

 much of it was eight feet thick, and for more than ten miles it was 

 packed tightly together. Do you ask how she got through it ? I 

 answer, in about the same way that a snow-plough would clean a 

 foot of light snow from the track of the Grand Trunk Railway : 

 with perfect ease. The engines worked without a jolt, or a strain, 

 and \he steamer forced the pans aside or crushed them under her keel 

 with a power and speed that challenged our wondering admiration. 

 We did not consider it so much an impediment to our progress as 

 the means of furnishing us amusement. Indeed, I can scarcely 

 conceive of local ice so heavy, or compact, or jammed, that it would 

 delay a steamer, such as I have described, more than ten or fifteen 

 per cent, of her usual speed. And again, I affirm that, if there be 

 nothing in the North Atlantic at the mouth of Davis's Strait to 

 hinder, Hudson Strait is navigable — navigable as a commercial 

 highway — at least eight months in each year, or as long as the 

 temperatiire is sufficiently high to admit of out-door operations. 



That which is most to be dreaded by the navigator of Hudson 

 Strait is the arctic ice — not icebergs — that comes down Fox Chan- 

 nel. There are a good many theories concerning it, but time and 

 investigation alone can demonstrate the correctness or fallacy of them. 

 It is held by those most experienced, and I believe Dr. Bell entertains 

 this opinion, that this ice comes down into the Strait, say for five 

 years in succession, and that, following this period, it does not pre- 

 sent itself again for about twenty years. It will be a great boon to 

 commerce if this turns out to be correct. The theory is supported 

 by the experiences of Hudson's Bay Company's ship captains for a 

 period of nearly two hundred years. 



It is called by navigators of northern waters, island-pan ice, and 

 is well named. Its thickness is from ten to thirty feet, and the pans 

 are of all dimensions, some twenty by forty yards, but most of them 



