336 
THE OPEN WATER. 
chief as a mark, and taking compass-bearings to guide 
us back again, we began to look around us. Our 
expectations of hummock action were agreeably dis- 
appointed. We thought that the storm would have 
driven the ice from the southward, and that the 
change of wind would have marshaled opposing floes 
to meet it. But it was not so. Even the young, 
marginal ice, though warped, was unbroken. The 
pressure had evidently taken place, but with little 
effect. After the gigantic upheavings of Lancaster 
Sound, excited by winds much weaker, no wonder I 
w^as surprised. Upon thinking it over, I came to the 
conclusion that the absence of a poifit d'appui, either 
of land or land-ice, was the cause of these diminished 
actions. We were now in a great sea, surrounded by 
consolidated floes, and away from salient capes or 
shore-bound ice. The pressure was diffused through- 
out a greater mass, without points of special or even 
unequal resistance. If this reasoning hold, we will 
not experience the expected tumult until we drift 
into a region where forces are more in opposition; 
perhaps not until we reach the contraction of Davis' 
Straits. 
" The young ice margin of this open lead had the 
appearance of a beautiful wave-flattened sand beach. 
The lead itself had opened so far that its opposite 
shores were barely visible. The wind checked the 
immediate formation of new ice; and, to our inex- 
pressible joy, there, glittering in the cold sunlight, 
were little rippling waves. So long have we been 
pent up by this wretched circle of unchanging snow, 
that I make myself ridiculous by talking of trifles, 
with which you, milk-drinking, sun-basking, melted- 
water-seeing people at home can have no sympathy. 
