xxvi Introduction. 



reduced the risk formerly incident to navigation in 

 Baffin's Bay and Barrow Straits. 



We have the " Arctic " committing herself volun- 

 tarily to be beset in Davis' Straits until there were 

 some fifty miles of heavy pack between her and 

 open water ; and then, when no more whales were 

 to be found, gallantly fighting her way by steam 

 power through the interlaced ice-fields until the 

 clear sea was again reached. We find that middle 

 ice, which for half a century has been the bugbear 

 of the whale fisher, when tackled by a vessel of 500 

 tons and 70-horse power engines, no longer spoken 

 of as an impenetrable barrier. The whaler under 

 sail thought himself fortunate in traversing it once 

 in every three years, with a vast expenditure of 

 labour, in from a month to sixty days. The " Arc- 

 tic " and her sister vessels have now for nine years 

 consecutively got through this middle ice under 

 steam in as many hours. We see the "Arctic," 

 in quest of her prey, passing point after point, 

 during a summer cruise, which for fifty years had 

 been the extremes reached by discovery expedi- 

 tions. Steam power has robbed the navigation of 

 those regions of nearly all its difficulties and much 

 of its risk. The " Arctic," with her keen hunters 

 of the whale, dashes boldly past John Boss's far- 

 thest in 1818; Sir Edward Parry's farthest, in 

 Prince Regent's Inlet, in 1825 ; Franklin's winter 

 quarters at Beechey Island are reached ; Sir James 



