when we halted to dine at two A.M., after six hours’ severe toil, and much risk to the men and boats, we had only accomplished about a mile and a quarter in a N.N.E. direction.  After dining we proceeded again till half past six, and then halted, very much fatigued with our day’s work, and having made two miles and a half of northing.  We were here in latitude, by account, 81 deg. 23”, and in longitude, by the chronometers, 21 deg. 32’ 34” E., in which situation the variation of the magnetic needle was observed to be 15 deg. 31’ westerly.  We now enjoyed the first sunshine since our entering the ice, and a great enjoyment it was, after so much thick and wet weather.  We rose at half past four P.M., in the hopes of pursuing our journey; but, after hauling the boats to the edge of the floe, found such a quantity of loose, rugged ice to the northward of us, that there was no possibility, for the present, of getting across or through it.  Observing a small opening at 10.30 P.M., we launched the boats, and hauled them across several pieces of ice, some of them being very light and much decayed.  Our latitude, by the sun’s meridian altitude at midnight, was 81 deg. 23’; so that we had made only eight miles of northing since our last observation at noon on the 25th.

The 30th commenced with snowy and inclement weather, which soon rendered the atmosphere so thick that we could no longer see our way, obliging us to halt till two P.M., when we crossed several small pools with great labour and loss of time.  We had generally very light ice this day, with some heavy, rugged pieces intermixed; and, when hauling across these, we had sometimes to cut with axes a passage for the boats among the hummocks.  We also dragged them through a great many pools of fresh water, to avoid the necessity of going round them.  The wind freshening up from the S.S.W., we afterward found the ice gradually more and more open, so that, in the course of the day, we made by rowing, though by a very winding channel, five miles of northing; but were again stopped by the ice soon after midnight, and obliged to haul up on the first mass that we could gain, the ice having so much motion that we narrowly escaped being “nipped.”  We set out at 11.30 A.M. on the 1st July, the wind still fresh from the S.W., and some snow falling:  but it was more than an hour before we could get away from the small pieces of ice on which we slept, the masses beyond being so broken up and so much in motion, that we could not, at first, venture to launch the boats.  Our latitude, observed at noon, was 81 deg. 30’ 41”.  After crossing several pieces, we at length got into a good “lead” of water, four or five miles in length; two or three of which, as on the preceding day, occurred under the lee of a floe, being the second we had yet seen that deserved that name.  We then passed over four or five small floes, and across the pools of water that lay between them.  The ice was now less broken up, and sometimes tolerably level; but from