THE ROAD, 
111 
the inestimable value of these dogs: I had yet to learn 
their power and speed, their patient, enduring forti¬ 
tude, their sagacity in tracking these icy morasses, 
among which they had been born and bred. 
I determined to hold back my more distant pro¬ 
vision parties as long as the continued daylight would 
permit; making the Newfoundland dogs establish the 
depots within sixty miles of the brig. My previous 
journey had shown me that the ice-belt, clogged with 
the foreign matters dislodged from the cliffs, would not 
at this season of the year answer for operations with 
the sledge, and that the ice of the great pack outside 
was even more unlit, on account of its want of con¬ 
tinuity. It was now so consolidated by advancing 
cold as to have stopped its drift to the south; but the 
large floes or fields which formed it were imperfectly 
cemented together, and would break into hummocks 
under the action of winds or even of the tides. It was 
made still more impassable by the numerous bergs* 
which kept ploughing with irresistible momentum 
through the ice-tables, and rearing up barricades that 
defied the passage of a sledge. 
It Avas desirable, therefore, that our depot parties 
should not enter upon their work until they could 
avail themselves of the young ice. .This now occu¬ 
pied a belt, about one hundred yards in mean breadth, 
* The general drift of these great masses was to the south,—a plain 
indication of deep sea-currents in that direction, and a convincing 
proof, to me, of a discharge from some northern water. 
