98 
VOYAGE YO GREENLAND. 
experienced yesterday, it was therefore deemed 
expedient to run into open water for security. 
Scarcely did I experience, during the voyage, a 
more^ unpleasant night ; a continued fall of snow 
rendered the cold intense. The violence of the 
gale often laid the vessel on her “beam ends;” 
and the heavy blows that she received from the ice, 
the effect of which I can only compare to the shock 
sustained by a ship in striking against sunken 
rocks, would have occasioned me the most serious 
apprehensions for our safety, if I had not become 
habituated to the incidents of an arctic voyage. 
Having lay to the greater part of yester- 
June 18. purpose of attending to the 
duties of the Sabbath, and the wind this morning 
abating to a gentle breeze from the north, we sailed 
towards the body of western ice. The seamanship 
displayed during this day, in making judicious 
boards, to weather points that occurred in our course 
through a long, strait, and treacherous opening in 
the ice, was beyond all praise. It is impossible to 
conceive any thing more interesting than the intri- 
cacies of the passage between floes of various 
sizes, many of which had evidently been broken 
from fields during the late gales. The sun dazzled 
my eyes by its glow upon the snow-clad ice, and 
the temperature of the thermometer became reduced 
to thirty-five degrees. 
The effect of this powerful exhalation soon began 
to indicate what might be expected ; a thick fog- 
