COLLISION WITH ICEBERGS. 



557 



foxes, and bears preyed and prowled upon the ice ; and the sea 

 furnished a home to jaggers, kittiwakes, and whales. Having 

 ascended as high as 80° 34/ N., and finding it impossible to 

 penetrate farther to the north, Buchan resolved to quit the 

 waters of Spitzbergen and stand away for those of Greenland. 

 A pack of floating icebergs, upon which the waves were beating 

 furiously, beset the ships. The Trent came violently in colli- 

 sion with a mass many hundred times her size. Every man on 

 board lost his footing ; the masts bent at the shock, while the 

 timbers cracked beneath the pressure. This accident rendered 

 a prosecution of the voyage impracticable, and the two ships 

 returned to England, where they arrived in October. The ex- 

 pedition thus failed of the main object it was intended to 

 accomplish. 



As we have already remarked, Ross neglected the oppor- 

 tunity afforded him of penetrating to the interior of Lancaster 

 Sound, — thus leaving for another the glory of attaching his 

 name to the discoveries to be made there. The Government, 

 being dissatisfied with his management, and being encouraged 

 by Lieutenant Parry to believe that the supposed chain of 

 mountains barring the passage had no existence but in Ross's 

 imagination, gave him the command of two ships, strongly 

 manned and amply stored, for the prosecution of discovery in 

 that direction. He left England on the 11th of May, 1819, 

 with the ship Hecla and the gun-brig Griper. On the 15th of 

 June he unexpectedly saw land, — which proved to be Cape 

 Farewell, the southern point of Greenland, though at a distance 

 of more than a hundred miles. The ships were immovably 

 "beset" by ice on the 25th: their situation was utterly help- 

 less, all the power that could be applied not availing to turn 

 their heads a single degree of the compass. 



The officers and men occupied themselves in various manners 

 during this period of inaction. Observations were made on the 

 dip and variation of the magnetic needle, and lunar distances 



