APRIL 25, 1884. | 
ute, has closed in her front, makes it almost 
and often quite impossible to return: and the 
grinding, crushing pack soon builds up to her 
position, and encloses her under the most 
dangerous circumstances that can occur in ice- 
pressure, unless she can find an ‘ ice-dock’ 
like that described by Dr. Kane; and even 
this, at any minute, is liable to be obliterated 
by an increase of wind, or a pressure due to 
SCIENCE. 
509° 
ice broke up in Victoria Channel on July 24, 
1879, until the ice, newly forming, was suffi- 
ciently thick to stop a sailing-vessel (which 
was about the middle or latter part of Septem- 
ber ), I was forced to notice an almost contin- 
uous north-north-west veering to north-east 
wind, evidently caused by the warm rays of 
the almost never-setting summer’s sun heat- 
ing and rarifying the atmosphere over the vast 
Fic. 4.—H.M.S. Alert forced on the land. 
the accumulation of ice or change of tide. 
This state of affairs is, I think, more than prob- 
ably illustrated in the case of the besetment 
of Sir John Franklin’s Erebus and Terror, in 
September, 1846, off Cape Felix, on King Wil- 
liam’s Land. Attempting to pass throngh 
Victoria Channel, whose southward-trending 
current is at this point greatly narrowed by 
the converging shores of Victoria Land on the 
west, and those of North Somerset, Boothia, 
and King William’s Land on the east, his 
propellers worthless or his coal-supply short, 
either he must have encountered this ice-gorge 
so late in the year that his ships were almost 
immediately frozen in, or the summer’s winds 
held him against or in the pack, as already 
indicated. The latter idea seems to me very 
reasonable ; for during the time my party was 
on King William’s Land, from the time the 
snowless plains of upper British America, whose 
place is filled by the denser air chilled by the 
creat ice-fields of the Arctic Ocean. That 
this Victoria Channel is navigable under very 
favorable and exceptional circumstances is 
shown by the fact that one of these two ships 
afterwards floated down or sailed through this 
narrow strait to near the mainland of America, 
some one hundred and fifty miles, manned by 
not more than four or five men. 
A steam-vessel can go into winter harbor 
much later than one with sails alone; and this 
is of no small importance, considering the 
short season during which navigation is at all 
practicable. ‘This arises mostly from her su- 
perior advantages in ‘charging’ the newly 
forming ice of the early fall. The action of a 
sailing-vessel in this kind of ice is so well de- 
scribed by Sir Edward Parry, who had seen 
