312 EXPEDITIONS OF PARRY AND ROSS— 1S27 -22. 



The same process of dragging the sledges alternately was resumed on 

 the following day, and it is astonishing how such labour was continued day 

 after day by men whose food was at once insufficient and comfortless. Their 

 meat was frozen so hard that they were obliged to cut it with a saw ; and 

 their only way of thawing it was putting it into their warm cocoa. Fuel 

 could not be spared for the purpose of thawing the meat exclusively. On 

 the 26th, the party were imprisoned all day in their tent by a storm, and 

 on the following day so difficult was the road that the travellers did not 

 advance "more than three hundred yards in two hours." Stopped by a 

 gale on the 28th, they resolved to secure the boats and return to the ship, 

 where they arrived on the 30th. "The total result of this journey," says 

 Ross, " was, that we had walked a hundred and ten miles, and had advanced 

 in real distance but eighteen ; while it would be necessaiy to go over this 

 space three times more, before everything could be even thus far advanced 

 in a journey which was destined ultimately to be three hundred miles, 

 though the direct one was only a hundred and eighty." 



Arrived at the ship, Ross and his men immediately busied themselves in 

 preparing provisions for the advance. On the 3d May, two sledges were 

 taken to the first stage, four miles from the ship. The men who had 

 dragged them returned to the ship in the evening. On the 4th, Captain 

 Ross with ten men — the whole of the eft'ective crew — set out with one heavy 

 sledge. Day after day was spent in dragging on the sledges alternately, 

 until on the 16th the travellers crossed over Eclipse Harbour. Ross and 

 his party returned to the ship on the 21st, and commenced preparations to 

 carry on the sick men and the remainder of the provisions. In a week all 

 preliminaries were arranged. The chronometers and astronomical instru- 

 ments which could not be taken on, were buried, together with the gun- 

 powder, in a specially-prepared cache ; the masts, sails, and rigging of the ill- 

 fated " Victory " were placed in the Krusenstern barge, which was drawn 

 up on the shore. " And now," says Ross, in a passage at once striking and 

 pathetic, " we had secured everything on shore which could be of use to us 

 in case of our return, or which, if we did not, would prove of use to the 

 natives. The colours were therefore hoisted and nailed to the mast. We 

 drank a parting glass to our poor ship, and, having seen every man out in the 

 evening, I took my own adieu of the 'Victory,' which had deserved a better 

 fate. It was the first vessel that I had ever been obliged to abandon, after 

 having served in thirty-six, during a period of forty-two y^ars. It was like 

 the last parting with an old friend ; and I did not pass the point where she 

 ceased to be visible without stopping to take a sketch of this melancholy 

 desert, rendered more melancholy by the solitary, abandoned, helpless home 

 of our past years, fixed in immovable ice, tiU Time should perform on her his 

 usual work." 



Digitized by IVIicrosoft® 



