THE LEAD. 
331 
and west. Balboa himself never looked out upon an 
ocean with more grateful feelings than I did upon this 
open chasm, the first inbreak upon complete solidity 
which we had known since the 15th of January. It 
was a breach in our prison-walls. The undulatory 
movement of the mercury and the varied appearance 
of the clouds were now explained. Although only dis- 
covered this morning, the rupture must have been go- 
ing on for days, perhaps a week. Our winds had fa- 
vored the separation of cracks into wide channels ; but 
how such changes could have taken place puzzled 
me. 
The ice, as shown by my measurements, was from 
four to eight feet ; and even now, when I recall the 
fearful sounds which accompanied the Lancaster Sound 
commotions, I can hardly realize that such extensive 
chasms should have been formed almost in silence. 
We could only guess what had been the extent of our 
ice-field at this time. Baffin’s Bay was nearly three 
hundred miles across, and the field may have been 
twice as long in the other direction. Perhaps the wave 
action of a heavy sea, great sub-glacial billows, unfelt 
at our fast-cemented little vessel, may have broken the 
tables without the crash and tumult of a collision. 
The lead where I first reached it, to the southeast 
of our brig, was nearly three hundred yards across ; 
not, however, three hundred yards of open water, but 
a separation between the two sides of the original floe 
of about that distance. The sides still showed their 
clean-edged fracture, diversified by drift and hummock, 
and rising above the intervening level, like the banks 
of a tideless river, margined by new ice and crusted 
with efflorescing snow. But at its further or southern 
side, a long strip, narrow and very black, gave evi- 
