338 
THE ICE-FOOT IN AUGUST. 
the failure of our recent effort to secure the means of a 
retreat. 
The brig had been imprisoned by closely-cementing 
ice for eleven months, during which period she had not 
budged an inch from her icy cradle. My journal will 
show the efforts and the hopes which engrossed oui 
few remaining days of uncertainty and suspense:— 
“August 8, Tuesday.—This morning two saw-lines 
were passed from the open-water pools at the sides of 
our stempost, and the ice was bored for blasting. In 
the course of our operations the brig surged and righted, 
rising two and a half feet. We are now trying to warp 
her a few yards toward Butler Island, where we again 
go to work with our powder-canisters. 
“August 11, Friday.—Returned yesterday from an 
inspection of the ice toward the Esquimaux settlements; 
but, absorbing as was -my errand, I managed to take 
geognostical sections and profdcs of the coast as far 
south-as Peter Force Bay, beyond which the ice was 
impenetrable. 
“ I have often referred to the massive character of the 
ice in that neighborhood. The ice-foot, by our winter 
measurement twenty-seven feet in mean thickness by 
forty yards in width, is now of dimensions still more 
formidable. Large masses, released like land-slides by 
the action of torrents from the coast, form here and 
there a belt or reef, which clogs the shoal water near 
the shore and prevents a passage. Such ice I have 
seen thirty-six feet in height; and when subjected, as 
it often is, to liummock-squeezing, sixty and seventy 
