May 2, 1834.] 
Another advantage is in the fact, that if the 
body of water in which the vessel is cruising 
be of considerable extent, and ploughed by 
ocean-currents, the ice well out to sea does not 
become fixed nor solidly frozen during even 
the severest winters ; and avessel thus embayed 
is at the mercy of the grinding ice-packs caused 
by the winds and currents at a time when, 
even if she were liberated, the intense cold of 
that season would make it rigidly impossible 
to manipulate her; and, in fact, a liberation 
under these circumstances would be the very 
last thing to be desired. The Tegetthoff and 
Jeannette, in their drifts, were thus partially 
fortunate, although suffering from constant 
dread of liberation; and Franklin’s ships had 
the advantage that Victoria Channel, through 
SCIENCE. 
537 
made, and many times forced, during heavy 
gales, to hastily abandon his ship, with a scanty 
supply of clothing and food, in the arctic win- 
ter night, expecting the crushing of his vessel 
in the whirling, upheaving ice-floes, show 
plainly the great extent of misery and suffer- 
ings which a crew may be called upon to bear 
when not safely harbored for the winter. 
Another consideration on inshore navigation 
I will give in the words of its author, Lieut. 
Payer, who says, — 
‘¢A strip of open water, which retreats before the 
growth of the land-ice only in winter, forms itself 
along coasts, and especially under the lee of those 
exposed to marine currents running parallel to them; 
and this coast-water does not arise from the thawing 
of the ice through the great heat of the land, but 
from the land’s being an immovable barrier against 
Fie. 2. — REDUCING A FLOE-BERG. 
which, it seems, they attempted to take the 
middle course, is sufficiently narrow to freeze 
from shore to shore, and prevent the miseries 
of a winter’s drift. Sir George Back, in the 
Terror, drifting through, Fox Channel and Hud- 
son’s Strait in the winter of 1836-37, did not 
fare so well; and his terrible sufferings, unable 
to house his vessel in snow-banks, which were 
constantly torn from his ship’s sides by the 
ceaseless disruption of the ice-fields as fast as 
the wind, and therefore against ice-currents. The 
inconstancy of the wind, however, may bafile all the 
calculations of navigation; for coast-water, open as 
far as the eye can reach, may be filled with ice in a 
short time by a change of wind. Land-ice often re- 
mains on the coast, even during summer; and in this 
case there is nothing to be done but to find the open 
navigable water between the extreme edge of the 
fast-ice and the drift-ice. Should the drift become 
pack-ice, the moment must be awaited when winds 
setting in from the land carry off the masses of ice 
blocking the navigation, and open a passage free from 
ice, or at least ouly partially covered with drift-ice.”’ 
