Arctic Cruise of the U.S. S. Thetis m 1889. 183 
pressed from behind by the force and weight of the entire north- 
ern pack. It is gradually forced up, ploughing its way through 
the bottom, at the same time rising gradually along the ascent 
of the bottom toward the land. The effect of this solid wall of 
cold and relentless blue ice slowly rising and advancing upon 
those imprisoned between the ice and the shore is one of the most 
sublime and terrible things that can be experienced. 
The normal current running north through Bering strait forks 
a short distance to the north, one branch going through Kotzebue 
Sound and thence along the mainland by Cape Seppings, Point 
Hope, and Icy cape, to Point Barrow, at which point it goes off to 
the unknown northeast ; the other branch, to the northwestward 
along the Siberian coast, and thence to the northward toward 
Herald island. The whalers burned by the Confederate vessel 
Shenandoah near Bering strait were found in the vicinity of 
Herald island. 
The only portion of the whalers at the time actively cruising 
had gone to the eastward of Point Barrow. On that day a sea- 
man named Tuckfield returned from the Mackenzie in a whaleboat, 
and reported the ice conditions unusually favorable as far east as 
Mackenzie Bay, in the vicinity of which he had wintered. He was. 
a seaman belonging to the whaling station and had been reported 
to me by a missionary I met at St. Michaels as having visited his 
station at Rampart house, upon the Porcupine river, a branch of 
the Yukon. 
Upon the 8th of August the house of refuge was virtually 
finished, and as my orders were to devote my time to the whaling 
fleet, after the completion of this structure, I concluded to cruise 
after and with the vessel to the eastward of Point Barrow, leav- 
ing the Bear to remain with the vessels lying at anchor off Cape 
Smyth and Point Barrow. As Tuckfield wanted to go east with 
his Eskimo guide, I took him and his whale, boat and whaling 
outfit on board, leaving Cape Smyth on the evening of the 8th. 
The ice in sight at the time was somewhat scattered, but plenti- 
ful, and entering it about nine o’clock we slowly stood on a course 
parallel to the land. We were occupied in working through this 
ice all night and all of the next day ; it was not the pack ice but 
shore ice broken off from the vicinity of Point Tangent, Smyth 
bay, and Harrison bay. At times we found it so closely packed 
together by current and wind that we had to turn back and work 
our way closer inshore. Three vessels under sail were sighted 
