When to the ordinary difficulties which the navigation of the Polar Seas presents were superadded the disadvantages of a temperature at or near zero, its necessary concomitant the young ice, and twelve hours of darkness daily, it was impossible any longer to entertain a doubt of the expediency of immediately placing the ships in the best security that could be found for them during the winter, rather than run the risk of being permanently detached from the land by an endeavour to regain the continent.  We were in hopes of receiving effectual shelter from the numerous grounded masses, but could only find berths within one of them in five to six fathoms water.  We now, for the first time, walked on board the ships; and, before night, had them moved into their places, by sawing a canal for two or three hundred yards through the ice.  The average thickness of the new floe was already three inches and a quarter; but being in some places much less, several officers and men fell in, and, from the difficulty of getting a firm place to rest on, narrowly escaped a more serious inconvenience than a thorough wetting.  The whole sheet of ice, even in those parts which easily bore a man’s weight, had a waving motion under the feet, like that of leather or any other tough flexible substance set afloat, a property which is, I believe, peculiar to salt-water ice.

In reviewing the events of this our first season of navigation, and considering what progress we had made towards the accomplishment of our main object, it was impossible, however trifling that progress might appear upon the chart, not to experience considerable satisfaction.  Small as our actual advance had been towards Behring’s Strait, the extent of coast newly discovered and minutely explored in pursuit of our object, in the course of the last eight weeks, amounted to more than two hundred leagues, nearly half of which belonged to the Continent of North America.  This service, notwithstanding our constant exposure to the risks which intricate, shoal, and unknown channels, a sea loaded with ice, and a rapid tide concurred in presenting, had providentially been effected without injury to the ships, or suffering to the officers and men; and we had now once more met with tolerable security for the season.  Above all, however, I derived the most sincere satisfaction from a conviction of having left no part of the coast from Repulse Bay eastward in a state of doubt as to its connexion with the continent.  And as the mainland now in sight from the hills extended no farther to the eastward than about a N.N.E. bearing, we ventured to indulge a sanguine hope of our being very near the northeastern boundary of America, and that the early part of the next season would find us employing our best efforts in pushing along its northern shores.

CHAPTER VI.