SECOND VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY. 



77 



are we to be influenced by present impressions rather than by those, how- 

 ever strong or often repeated, that past events have left upon the mind, that 

 I believe even those who have been the longest habituated to the surprising 

 changes, which an hour or two will frequently bring about in these seas, can- 

 not altogether divest themselves of similar sensations. 



At twenty minutes after noon, having advanced only a mile or two through 

 very close " sailing ice," the Fury was beset in trying to force through a 

 narrow though heavy stream, round the end of which the Hecla more pru- 

 dently sailed. Having hove to on the opposite side of it, Captain Lyon im- 

 mediately sent his boats with lines to endeavour to tow us out by making 

 sail on the Hecla, a method which cannot be too strongly recommended, and 

 which serves as an example of the mutual assistance that may be rendered 

 by two ships employed on this service. The line proved rather too weak for 

 the weight of the masses of ice, but the impulse communicated by it before it 

 broke, aided by our own exertions, enabled us shortly after to escape, and we 

 again made sail to the north ward. At forty-five minutes past one P.M., we had 

 come to the end of the clear water, and prepared to shorten sail, to await some 

 alteration in our favour. At this time the weather was so warm, that we had just 

 exposed a thermometer to the sun, to ascertain the temperature of its rays, 

 which could not have been less than 70° or 80°, when a thick fog, which had 

 for some hours been curling over the hills of Vansittart Island, suddenly 

 came on, creating so immediate and extreme a change that I never remem- 

 ber to have experienced a more chilling sensation. As we could no longer 

 see a hundred yards around us in any direction, nothing was to be done but 

 to make the ships fast to the largest piece of ice we could find, which we 

 accordingly did at two P.M., in one hundred and fifty-eight fathoms, at the 

 distance of three or four miles to the eastward of Sturges Bourne Islands. 

 Just before dark the fog cleared away for a few minutes, when, perceiving 

 that the wind which was now increasing was likely to drift us too near the 

 islands, we took advantage of the clear interval to run a mile further from 

 the land for the night, where we again made fast to a large floe-piece in two 

 hundred fathoms. The ice in this neighbourhood was the heaviest, though 

 not in the largest floes, of any we had yet seen on this voyage. It was for 

 the most part covered with hummocks, and appeared yellow from the quan- 

 tity of sand that lay upon it, and from which it generally receives the name 

 of " dirty ice." After dark the fog was succeeded by heavy rain for several 

 hours. 



