THE PACK IN AUGUST. 
339 
feet. It requires experience to distinguish it from the 
true iceberg. 
“ When I passed up the Sound on the 6th of August, 
after my long southern journey, I found the ice-foot 
comparatively unbroken, and a fine interval of open 
water between it and the large floes of the pack. Since 
then, this pack has been broken up, and the commi¬ 
nuted fragments, forming a great drift, move with tides 
and currents in such a way as to obliterate the ‘land- 
water at high tide, and under some circumstances at 
other times. This broken rubbish occasionally expands 
enough to permit a boat to pass through; but, as we 
found it, a passage could only be effected by heavy 
labor, and at great expense to our boat, nearly unsear 
worthy now from her former trials. We hauled her up 
near Bedevilled Headland, and returned to the brig 
on foot. 
“ As I travelled back along the coast, I observed the 
wonderful changes brought about by the disruption of 
the pack. It was my hope to have extricated the brig, 
if she was ever to be liberated, before the drift had 
choked the land-leads; but now they are closely jammed 
with stupendous ice-fragments, records of inconceivable 
pressures. The bergs, released from their winter 
cement, have driven down in crowds, grounding on the 
shallows, and extending in reefs or chains out to sea¬ 
ward, where they have caught and retained the floating 
ices. The prospect was really desolation itself. One 
floe measured nine feet in mean elevation above the 
water-level; thus implying a tabular thickness by 
