CHAPTER XL VIII. 
I OUGHT perhaps, as a book-maker, to go on with a 
diary of our second progress toward the north. But 
my work is almost done. New excitements, more 
kindred to my habits than those of authorship, are 
urging me while I arrange these pages for the press; 
and I feel that my readers, like myself, must be tired 
of eflbrts that had no result. 
From the 13th of July to the 13th of August we 
loitered along, impatient at the delays which every 
day forced on us. In the whole month we made hut 
thirty-seven miles. Yet we had no lack of incidents, 
some of them novel, and some not without more stir- 
ring interest. But the scenery of the bergs, majestic 
and varied as it was, began to weary us. Even the 
hazards of our narrow, and tortuous, and almost criti- 
cal navigation became things of use ; and when we 
found ourselves at rest, as we did sometimes, safe and 
motionless in the surface of an ice-field, we were wast- 
ed with ennui. 
Alter a while, the leads opened close into the shore, 
and we followed them almost to the base of the cliffs. 
From this position the indentations and occasional de- 
pressions of the coast enabled us to see into the coun- 
try to a considerable distance. 
That singular ejected rock, the Devil’s Thumb, of 
which I have given several sketches, stands in the re- 
cess of a curve, of which AVilcox Point forms a head- 
land. The shore in its immediate neighborhood is not 
lofty, hut dotted here and there with hills jutting out 
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