A WINTER IN THE PACK. 537 



through October and November they were driven to and fro by the chang- 

 ing wind, though they never passed out of the channel. The perils and 

 labour endured during these months were such as few men are ever called to 

 experience. Sometimes the hummocks, consisting of massive granite-like 

 blocks, would be thrown up above the ship's side to the height of twenty or 

 thirty feet, and " this action in the ice," says De Haven, " was accompanied 

 with a variety of sounds impossible to be described, but which, when heard, 

 never failed to carry a feeling of awe into the stoutest hearts." 



De Haven had failed after repeated and anxious endeavours to reach a 

 harbour, and he was doomed to spend the winter at the mercy of the drift- 

 ing ice. " In one respect," writes Seemann, " this is the most extraordinary 

 of all searching expeditions, namely, in its being exposed to drifting ice from 

 the middle of September 1850 to the middle of June 1851, an occurrence 

 altogether unprecedented." Seemann appears to have forgotten the dis- 

 astrous voyage of Sir George Back in the " Terror " in 1836-37. But we must 

 follow De Haven's narrative. Toward the close of November, the " Advance " 

 was drifted south-east to a point about five miles south-west of Beechey Island ; 

 and on the last day of the month a strong wind from the west sprang up and 

 carried the vessel clear of Wellington Channel and into Lancaster Sound. 

 During the remainder of December, the drift of the "Advance" (still imprisoned 

 in the pack) to the eastward, averaged nearly six miles per day, so that on the 

 last of the month De Haven found himself at the entrance of Lancaster Sound. 

 By the 14th January he was fairly launched into Baffin Bay, and his line of 

 drift began to be more southerly, assuming a direction nearly parallel with the 

 western shore of the bay, at a distance of some forty to seventy miles from it. 

 On the 29th the sun rose his whole diameter above the horizon, and remained 

 visible for an hour ; but with the lengthening daylight the cold became only 

 the more intense, and in February, and again in March, mercury froze, 

 though it had remained fluid during the dark days of winter. But curiously 

 enough, a very low temperature was invariably accompanied with clear and 

 calm weather, so that in the " Advance " the coldest days were perhaps the 

 most pleasant. 



The ice, in the midst of which the " Advance " and her consort, the 

 "Rescue," were drifting, had frequently been subject to temporary disrup- 

 tion ; but in February it became cemented again, and no other rupture took 

 place until the final one which permitted the vessels to escape. " Still," says 

 De Haven, "we kept driving to the southward, along with the whole 

 mass. Open lanes of water were at all times seen from aloft ; sometimes 

 they would be found within a mile or two of us. Narwhales, seals, and 

 dovekies were seen in them. . . . Bears would frequently be seen prowl- 

 ing about ; only two were killed during the winter, others were wounded, 

 but made their escape. A few of us thought their flesh very palatable and 

 10 3y 



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