A REGION OF ICEBERGS. 181 



north of their position. After twelve days' travel- 

 ling they came to the base of the " Great Glacier," 

 where Morton left his party, and, in company with 

 an Esquimaux named Hans, set out with a dog- 

 sledge to prosecute the journey of exploration. 



They walked on the sea-ice in a line parallel with 

 the glacier, and proceeded twenty-eight miles that 

 day, although the snow was knee-deep and soft. 

 At the place where they encamped a crack enabled 

 them to measure the ice. It was seven feet five 

 inches thick ! And this in June. We may men- 

 tion here, in passing, that Dr. Kane never got his 

 vessel out of that frozen strait, which seems to be 

 bound by perpetual ice. He and his party escaped 

 with their lives ; but the vessel that bore them 

 thither is probably still embedded in that ice. 



Next day Morton and Hans came to a region of 

 icebergs, which had arrested a previous sledging- 

 party of the same expedition. " These [icebergs] 

 were generally very high, evidently newly separated 

 from the glacier. Their surfaces were fresh and 

 glassy, and not like those generally met with in 

 Baffin's Bay, less worn, and bluer, and looking in 

 all respects like the face of the Great Glacier. 

 Many were rectangular, some of them regular 

 squares, a quarter of a mile each way ; others more 

 than a mile long." 



To pass amidst these bergs was a matter of 

 labour, difficulty, and danger. Sometimes the sides 

 of them came so close together, that the men could 



