318 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



in one or two spots to the height of forty or fifty feet. The current in mid- 

 channel was running three or four knots to the eastward when we came 

 through, and nothing but the boldness of the shore would have enabled 

 us to effect a passage, as the wind was too light to stem the stream in the 

 middle. 



Steering to the southward of the island before seen from Cape North-East, 

 in order still to keep along the continental shore, we passed between two 

 dangerous shoals, one of which runs off from the island and the other lies 

 quite by itself, about midway between this and the main-land. The latter 

 was at this time pointed out by a great quantity of heavy ice lying aground 

 upon it, as well as by a yellow sandstone rock that made its appearance in 

 one or two placesjust above the surface of the water. After clearing these, 

 and again deepening our soundings, we had begun to indulge the most flatter- 

 ing hopes of now making such a rapid progress as would in some degree com- 

 pensate for all our delays and disappointments, when, at once to crush every 

 expectation of this sort, it was suddenly announced from the crow's-nest 

 that another barrier of fixed ice stretched completely across the Strait, a little 

 beyond us, in one continuous and impenetrable field, still occupying its 

 winter-station. In less than an hour we had reached its margin when, find- 

 ing this report but too correct, and that therefore all further progress was at 

 present as impracticable as if no Strait existed, we ran the ships under all 

 sail for the floe, which proved so " rotten" and decayed that the ships forced 

 themselves three or four hundred yards through it before they stopped. 

 Keeping all our canvass spread we then tried to break the thin edges about 

 the numerous holes, by dropping weights over the bows, as well as by vari- 

 ous other equally ineffectual expedients ; but the ice was " tough" enough 

 to resist every effort of this kind, though its watery state was such as to 

 increase if possible our annoyance at being stopped by it. The passage to 

 the northward of the island was not even so clear as this by above two miles 

 of ice, so that in every respect our present route was to be preferred to the 

 other ; and thus after a vexatious delay of six weeks at the eastern entrance 

 of the Strait, and at a time when we had every reason to hope that nature, 

 though hitherto tardy in her annual disruption of the ice, had at length made 

 an effort to complete it, did we find our progress once more opposed by a 

 barrier of the same continuous, impenetrable, and hopeless nature as at 

 first ! 



We lay here in thirty-six fathoms on a soft bottom, being about a mile and a 



