30 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



forward. Fogs, shallows, and ground-ice were now 

 the order of the day. For whole days in three 

 fathoms of water, sometimes, indeed, with not more 

 than a few inches under our keel, we had to push our 

 way through drift and ground ice. These latter 

 masses, larger and heavier than the Vega, had to 

 be removed. When this could not be accomplished 

 by pressure with the whole strength of our machinery, 

 we had to make an onset and rush against it at 

 fall speed. Only a vessel so strong and well-con- 

 structed as the Vega could for any length of time 

 have stood such blows. To run at full speed against 

 ground-ice is equivalent to rushing against a fixed 

 object. Either the ship or the ice must give way. 

 Nevertheless our Vega went victorious out of the 

 combat, not a single scratch appearing on her sides of 

 scarlet oak. 



She frequently stuck fast between two ground- 

 ices, the only possibility of getting free being to blast 

 with powder, or to hew away, by means of ice-tools, 

 so much of their tops as lightened them sufficiently 

 to allow them to float. 



On the 12th of September, in the forenoon, we 

 arrived at the North Cape, where we were detained 

 six days by ice. The North Cape consists of two 

 promontories, some hundred feet high, jutting out 

 from the mainland. They enclose a shallow bay, 

 about half a mile in length, with an inlet between 

 north-east and north-west. In this bay the Vega lay 



