ICE NAVIGATION. 
41 
portions of the season; for, however it may be en¬ 
croached upon by storms or currents, they can gene¬ 
rally find room to track their vessels along its solid 
margin; or if the outside ice, yielding to off-shore 
winds, happens to recede, the interval of water be¬ 
tween the fast and the drift allows them not unfre- 
quently to use their sails. 
It is therefore one of the whalers’ canons of navigar 
tion, which they hold to most rigidly, to follow the 
shore. But it is obvious that this applies only to the 
early periods of the Arctic season, when the land ice of 
the inner hay is comparatively unbroken, as in May or 
June, or part of July, varying of course with the cir¬ 
cumstances. Indeed, the bay is seldom traversed ex¬ 
cept in these months, the northwest fisheries of Pond’s 
Bay, and the rest, ceasing to be of value afterward. 
Later in the summer, the inner ice breaks up into large 
floes, moving with wind and tide, that embarrass the 
navigator, misleading him into the notion that he is 
attached to his “fast,” when in reality he is accom¬ 
panying the movements of an immense floating ice¬ 
field. 
I have been surprised sometimes that our national 
ships of discovery and search have not been more 
generally impressed by these views. Whether the 
season has been mild or severe, the ice fast and solid, 
or broken and in drift, they have followed in August 
the same course which the whalers do in June, run¬ 
ning their vessels into the curve of the bay in search 
of the fast ice which had disappeared a month before. 
;• 
