parry’s attempt. 
281 
and last endeavour was undertaken by Parry, in 1827. 
Unable to get his ship even as far north as Phipps 
had gone, he determined to leave her in a harbour in 
Spitzbergen, and push across the sea in boats and 
sledges. The uneven nature of the surface over which 
they had to travel, caused their progress northward to 
be very slow, and very laborious. The ice too, beneath 
their feet, was not itself immovable, and at last they 
perceived they were making the kind of progress a 
criminal makes upon the treadmill,—the floes over 
which they were journeying—drifting to the southward 
faster than they walked north; so that at the end of 
a long day’s march of ten miles, they found them¬ 
selves four miles further from their destination than 
at its commencement. Disgusted with so Irish a 
manoeuvre, Parry determined to return, though not 
until he had almost reached the 83d parallel, a higher 
latitude than any to which man is known to have 
penetrated. * Arctic authorities are still of opinion, that 
Parry’s plan for reaching the pole might prove suc¬ 
cessful, if the expedition were to set out earlier in the 
season, ere the intervening field of ice is cast adrift 
by the approach of summer. 
