502 THE PEOGEESS OP MABITIME DISCOVEET. 



able to join this valuable friend, and the following year brought 

 them safely back to England. 



I pass over Parry's second and third voyages, undertaken in 

 the years 1821 and 1824, which were consumed in fruitless 

 endeavours to penetrate westward ; the first through some un- 

 known channel to the north of Hudson's Bay, the second through 

 Prince Eegent's Inlet ; but his last attempt to reach the North 

 Pole, by boat and sledge-travelling over the ice, is of too novel 

 and daring a character to remain unnoticed. His hopes of 

 success were founded on Scoresby's descriptions, who had seen 

 ice-fields so free from either fissure or hummock, that, had they 

 not been covered with snow, a coach might have been driven 

 many leagues over them in a direct line, without obstruction or 

 danger ; but when Parry reached the ice-fields to the north of 

 Spitzbergen he found them of a very different nature, composed 

 of loose rugged masses, which rendered travelling over them 

 extremely irksome and slow. 



The strong flat-bottomed boats — amphibious constructions, 

 half sledge, half canoe, — expressly built for an amphibious 

 journey over a region where solid ice was expected to alternate 

 with pools of water, had thus frequently to be unloaded, in order 

 to be raised over the intervening blocks or mounds, and repeated 

 journeys backward and forward over the same ground were the 

 necessary consequences. In some places the ice took the form 

 of sharp pointed crystals, which cut the boots like penknives ; in 

 others, sixteen or eighteen inches of soft snow made the work 

 of boat-dragging both fatiguing and tedious. Sometimes the 

 men were obliged, in dragging the boats, to crawl on all-fours,* 

 to make any progress at all, and one day, when heavy rain 

 melted the surface of the ice, four hours of vigorous effort 

 accomplished only half a mile. 



Yet in spite of all these obstacles they toiled cheerfully on 

 and on, until at length the discovery was made, that while they 

 were apparently advancing towards the Pole, the ice-field on 

 which they journeyed was moving to the south, and thus render- 

 ing all their exertions fruitless. Yet though disappointed in 

 his great hope of planting his country's standard on that unat- 

 tainable goal, Parry had the glory of reaching the highest 

 latitude (82° 45) ever attained by man. 



Before this adventurous voyage, Franklin, Eichardson, and 



