A NARROW ESCAPE. 



547 



ven, however, we prospected from its summit the state of the ice 

 over which we expected to travel that day, and found it rent here 

 and there with wide and diversified fissures. The prospect be- 

 fore us was certainly not very flattering, still we determined on 

 doing the best we could in making a trial. This trial we made, 

 but with what success will now appear. In passing almost direct 

 for Eogers's Island we found the ice of a very dangerous charac- 

 ter. It was groaning and cracking to an alarming extent. The 

 open water was only some three miles off, and the heaving sea be- 

 neath us threw up the frozen mass upon which we traveled in a 

 way that made it doubtful if we could proceed. Wide fissures 

 and numerous tide-holes were met, and frequently my companion 

 Ebierbing and myself had to move along the edge of these fis- 

 sures for some distance before we could find any passage across. 

 On one occasion the dogs were trotting along by the side of an 

 ice-fissure, while I was intent upon examining the land we were 

 passing, and Ebierbing was looking after a seal ; they suddenly 

 drew the sledge almost into the yawning chasm ; but, on my rais- 

 ing a cry of warning, Ebierbing, by a word, turned the team off 

 from the dangerous spot, and thus saved us. We arrived at Eog- 

 ers's Island at 7 P.M., and made our second encampment, having 

 made the distance of just twenty miles from Cape Haven on a 

 course N. by W. (true). 



We were detained on Eogers's Island one full day and two 

 nights by a terrific gale and snow-storm which occurred on the 

 24th. It was an anxious time with us, for there was every prob- 

 ability that the gale would make disastrous work with the ice 

 over which I intended to make my return to the ship. In case it 

 did so, we should not be able to reach the vessel in less than two 

 or three weeks, as we should have been obliged to make our way 

 as best we could to the land on the opposite side of the bay, and 

 thence, abandoning every thing, to have gone on foot over mount- 

 ains of rock and snow to Field Bay. 



Fortunately, we were preserved from this peril, and on the 25th 

 of June we reached Allen's Island in safety ; but, although I had 

 originally intended to go to the extreme of this bay, the advanced 

 season had made ice-traveling so precarious that I was forced to 

 confine my labors to the survey of that part of the bay south of 

 Allen's Island, and I commenced a renewed examination of the 

 place. A short distance from where we had our third encamp- 

 ment, which was on the south end of Allen's Island, I saw the 



