1876 POLAR ICE. 117 



pack was closing in fast. Although the current had 

 changed in the offing, where the ice was drifting 

 towards the south, that inshore was still moving fast to 

 the north, the two movements quickly collecting the ice 

 near us. The heavy floe which had previously stopped 

 our progress was drifting with the eddy current 

 towards the north, scraping its way along the ice- wall 

 in rather an alarming manner as it advanced towards 

 us. Steam being fortunately ready, we cast off. and 

 succeeded in passing between it and the shore through 

 an extremely narrow channel, most opportunely opened 

 for us, as it was pivoting round against the enormous 

 ' crossing-floe.' A few moments after we had passed, 

 It closed in against the ice-wall at the position we had 

 so lately vacated. 



The difference between an ordinary floe and Polar 

 ice was here well exemplified. The former, composed 

 of ice about six feet in thickness, on meeting with an 

 obstruction is torn in pieces as it presses past it ; the 

 latter, some eighty or a hundred feet thick, forces 

 its way past any impediment which may be in its course, 

 without damage to itself. Such was the case on this 

 occasion : the Polar floe, which we only escaped by a 

 few yards, on nipping against the heavy breastwork of 

 isolated floebergs lining the coast, some of them forty 

 feet high and many thousand tons in weight, tilted 

 them over one after another and forced them higher 

 up the shore, without receiving the slightest harm 

 itself, not a piece breaking away. 



Steering onwards through a water-channel, so narrow 

 that the boats suspended at the davits touched the cliff 

 of the shore ice-wall on several occasions, we arrived 



