PROGRESS TOWARDS THE WEST-LAND. 71 
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arose from my bed about noon, the ship was firm¬ 
ly beset in the midst of a pack, consisting of a 
wilderness of heavy, rugged drift-ice. Innu¬ 
merable hummocky peaks were on every hand, 
some of them reared to the height of 30 or 40 feet, 
and exhibiting, in a striking manner, the prodigi¬ 
ous effects of the occasional pressure. The next 
day the wind chopped round to the northward, 
and blew a hard gale. The effect was soon appa¬ 
rent, the ice beginning to slack and separate in 
all directions. 
On the 1st of June, in the morning, the ice 
had sufficiently relaxed its pressure to enable us 
to move. A vein of water stretching far to the 
eastward, having broken out a little to leeward, 
we bored through the intervening ice into it, 
without any canvas set, excepting the fore-sail oc¬ 
casionally, and prevented the shocks the ship un¬ 
der a fresh gale would otherwise have been ex¬ 
posed to, by dragging a small piece of ice, of a 
few fathoms diameter, astern. After a few leagues 
of intricate sailing towards the north-east had 
been accomplished, we fell into a clear sea, several 
miles across, bounded on the S W, W, NW, and 
N. by fields and floes. On stretching to the 
northward, we came to the edge of a heavy floe, 
8 or 10 miles in diameter, near which three or 
four large whales were seen. These all escaped 
