$48 
CiltEENLAND VOYAGE. 
ly, in the forenoon, the density of the fog rather 
diminished, so that we could sometimes see a 
distance of half a league. We immediately cast 
off', having a breeze from the SS W., and, directed 
to windward by the loud roaring of the ice, came, 
after a few hours sailing, to the border of a com¬ 
pact aggregation of ice, that had every appearance 
of being the “ sea-stream.” As we continued 
plying to windward, along its inner margin, a 
break in its ranks was happily discovered, through 
which, along with the Fame, we succeeded in ac¬ 
complishing a safe passage to sea. We now made 
all sail, and proceeded towards the south-east,— 
a course that soon took us entirely clear of the 
ice. 
It was a great relief to my mind to be thus 
able to extricate ourselves, in safety, from the 
mazes of the polar ice, now rendered particularly 
dangerous by the boisterous wands of this season, 
and foggy weather, with dark nights, rapidly in¬ 
creasing in length. The comfortable feelings now- 
excited by our comparative freedom from danger 
and anxiety, were not, I trust, unaccompanied by 
gratitude to a Superior Power for our constant 
preservation through a period of fourteen weeks, 
or, more exactly, a hundred days, during which we 
had been constantly encompassed by ice, at the dis¬ 
tance generally of 100 or 150 miles from the sea, 
and often in circumstances of no ordinary peril. 
