At five A.M. on the 21st, having gone ahead, as usual, upon a bay-floe, to search for the best road, I heard a more than ordinary noise and bustle among the people who were bringing up the boats behind.  On returning to them, I found that we had narrowly, and most providentially, escaped a serious calamity; the floe having broken under the weight of the boats and sledges, and the latter having nearly been lost through the ice.  Some of the men went completely through, and one of them was only held up by his drag-belt being attached to a sledge which happened to be on firmer ice.  Fortunately the bread had, by way of security, been kept in the boats, or this additional weight would undoubtedly have sunk the sledges, and probably some of the men with them.  As it was, we happily escaped, though we hardly knew how, with a good deal of wetting; and, cautiously approaching the boats, drew them to a stronger part of the ice, after which we continued our journey till half past six A.M., when we halted to rest, having travelled about seven miles N.N.W., our longitude by chronometers being 19 deg. 52’ east, and the latitude 82 deg. 39’ 10”, being only two miles and a quarter to the northward of the preceding day’s observation, or four miles and a half to the southward of our reckoning.

Our sportsmen had the good fortune to kill another seal to-day, rather larger than the first, which again proved a most welcome addition to our provisions and fuel.  Indeed, after this supply of the latter, we were enabled to allow ourselves every night a pint of warm water for supper, each man making his own soup from such a portion of his bread and pemmican as he could save from dinner.  Setting out again at seven in the evening, we were not sorry to find the weather quite calm, which sailors account “half a fair wind;” for it was now evident that nothing but a southerly breeze could enable us to make any tolerable progress, or to regain what we had lately lost.

Our travelling to-night was the very best we had during this excursion; for though we had to launch and haul up the boats frequently, an operation which, under the most favourable circumstances, necessarily occupies much time, yet the floes being large and tolerably level, and some good lanes of water occurring, we made, according to the most moderate calculation, between ten and eleven miles in a N.N.E. direction, and traversed a distance of about seventeen.  We halted at a quarter past eight A.M. after more than twelve hours’ actual travelling, by which the people were extremely fatigued; but, while our work seemed to be repaid by anything like progress, the men laboured with great cheerfulness to the utmost of their strength.  The ice over which we had travelled was by far the largest and heaviest we met with during our whole journey; this, indeed, was the only occasion on which we saw anything answering in the slightest degree to the descriptions given of the main ice.  The largest floe was from two and