378 
SUMMARY. 
tables were heaping up actively, and the chewing 
process of demolition was in full energy among them. 
I have some hope that the action may extend itself to 
the core of our veteran floe-circle ; but for the present 
it is confined to those peripheral adjuncts that have 
grown up around it in more recent freezings. A bird's- 
eye view from the mast-head, corrected by my walks, 
enables me to map -out its present shape with consid- 
erable accuracy." 
The "month of roses" closed on us without ad- 
venture ; but its last ten days were full of monitory 
changes. The increased temperature had been visibly 
acting upon the ice, softening down its rough angles, 
and reducing bowlders to mere knobs on the surface ; 
its weary monotony becoming every day only more 
disgusting. From the 1st to the 19th we had drifted 
almost a hundred miles, and had been expecting daily 
to make the eastern shore, when land was reported 
ahead. It proved to be the Highlands around Cape 
Searle, about thirty-five miles ofi". 
It was the first inbreak upon our desolate circle of 
ice and water that we had experienced in ninety-nine 
days. The hundredth gave us a complete range of 
dreary, snow-covered hills ; but to men whose last rec- 
ollections of terra firma were connected with the re- 
fracted spectres that followed us eighty miles from 
shore, just one hundred days since, the solid certainty 
of mountain ridges was inexpressibly grateful. We 
studied their phases, as we drew nearer to them, with 
an intentness which would have been ludicrous under 
different circumstances : every cranny, every wrinkle 
spoke to us of movement, of a relation with the shut- 
out world. Our drift which brought us this blessed 
variety was favored by an unusual prevalence of north- 
