OUTWARD PASSAGE.—DRIFT-WOOD. 19 
Our latitude on the 17th was 65° 58', longitude 
3° 53' W. A great quantity of drift-wood was 
passed during this day. Sometimes two or three 
pieces were seen at once. We picked up two 
trees, one of which was above thirty feet in length, 
perfectly straight, and well adapted for a jib-boom. 
This great supply of drift-wood is probably de¬ 
rived from some of the extensive rivers of Siberia, 
which empty themselves into the Frozen Ocean ; 
and being carried by the westerly current, prevail¬ 
ing on this coast, is dispersed throughout the 
Greenland Sea. All the drift-wood I have ex¬ 
amined was of pine; some of it of small diameter, 
the growth of centuries: but birch-trees have, I 
understand, been also met with. It is not un¬ 
common to find trees standing erect in the mid¬ 
dle of large sheets of ice,—a circumstance which 
is in favour of the supposition of such ice having 
been formed near land. In the summer of 1821, 
I found several pieces of timber thus situated. 
One of these that we hewed down (being so firm¬ 
ly embedded in a floe, that we could not other¬ 
wise remove it) was remarkable for the fineness of 
its grain or texture. It was a portion of a fir- 
tree, twelve feet in length; and although no more 
than six and a-half inches in diameter, it appear¬ 
ed, from the number of concentric rings observed 
on cutting it transversely, that it had been above 
