moment, as there is seldom any swell in the polar basin, owing to the ice, and the vessel can be taken across the ocean, under what sail is desirable, for there is from March, or earlier if required, to the last of June, to do it in-Baffi's Bay being impenetrable before the latter period. The expense of making the alterations can be of but little account to those, who have already bestowed so much where there is not the least prospect of pecuniary remuneration. But it is our task to write of what Mr. Parry has already done, rather than to frame theories and plans of our own.

The expedition made Cape Farewell on the 15th June, and on the 18th, they entered Davis's Straits, and as usual, encountered fields of ice, though not in such quantities as to retard their progress. From this time until the 24th, they advanced slowly to the northward, through floating ice, and in sight of innumerable bergs or grounded mountains, and also in sight of West Greenland. On the 24th, being in latitude 63° 34' 24", longitude 61° 34′ 28′′, they entered the fields of ice with an intention of approaching, if possible, the western coast of Baffin's Bay, or what was then thought to be the continent. Even the fact that Greenland was a peninsula, or an island, being then a matter of doubt, that was to be decided by the present voyage: We will presently see, how the one has been determined, and that but little doubt is left as to the geographical character of the other. On the 25th, both ships were completely beset in the ice, and continued perfectly helpless until the 30th, when they were extricated by returning to the eastward. From this time until the 4th of July, they continued running to the northward, when they again entered the ice, with the hope of getting over to the western shore, but were compelled to return to the open water, immediately. From this time until the 21st, they were moving slowly along the edge of the packed ice, making one or two abortive attempts to enter, when finding himself to be in 73°, which is near the latitude of Lancaster's sound, Mr. Parry determined to make every effort to get across the Bay. We will give the account of this laborious and dangerous passage, in his own words, as it will give the reader a clear idea of the difficulties they had constantly to encounter.

Having now reached the latitude of 73°, without seeing a single opening in the ice, and being unwilling to increase our distance from Sir James Lancaster's Sound, by proceeding much farther to the northward. I determined once more to enter the ice in this place, and to try the experiment of forcing our way through it, in order to get into the open sea, which the experience of the former voyage led me to believe we should find upon the western cost of Baffin's Bay. This determination was strengthened by the recollection of

the serious obstructions we had met with the preceding year, in the Beighbourhood of Prince Regent's Bay, where greater detention, as well as danger, had been experienced, than on any other part of that coast. Being now, therefore, favoured with clear weather, and a moderate breeze from the south eastward, we ran into the ice, which, for the first two miles, consisted of detached pieces, but afterwards of floes of considerable extent, and six or seven feet in thickness. The wind died away towards midnight, and the weather was serene and clear. The altitude of the sun on the meridian below the pole, gave the latitude 72° 59′ 13′′, being 11′ 57′′ to the southward of that deduced from the observations of the preceding and following noons, which error may, perhaps, be attributed to the elevation of the horizon by terrestrial refraction. The temperature of the air at this time was 40°; of the water, 34°, and the barometer stood at 29.57 inches. A large bear was seen on one of the floes, and we passed the tracks of many others.

'On the 22d, we had occasionally to heave the ships through with hawsers, between the heavy masses of ice, which became more and more close as we advanced, till, at length, towards the evening, we were fairly beset, there being no open water in sight from the masthead in any quarter of the compass. Some hands were kept constantly employed in heaving the ships through the ice, taking advantage of every occasional opening which presented itself, by which means we advanced a few hundred yards to the westward during the night.

On the 23d, a thick fog came on, which rendered it impossible to see our way any farther. It often happens, in thick weather, that much distance is lost by ships taking a wrong "lead," as the channels between floes of ice are technically called, so that, on the weather clearing, it is discovered, when too late, that another opening, perhaps a few yards only from that through which they had sailed, would have conducted them into clear water. We, therefore, warped to an iceberg, to which the ships were made fast at noon, to wait the clearing up of the fog, being in latitude 73° 04' 10', long. 60° 09′ 07"..... When ships are thus beset, there is a great advantage in securing them to the largest body of ice that can be found, and particularly to the bergs, as they are by this means better enabled to retain their situation, the drift of the ice being generally less, in proportion to its depth under water. Another advantage in securing a ship to an iceberg is, that these bodies usually keep a small space of clear water under their lee, in consequence of the quicker drift of the floes and loose ice to leeward. It not unfrequently happens that a ship is thus dragged into clear water, as the sailors express it, that is, that the whole of the floe-ice is carried to leeward past the berg to which the ship is attached, leaving her at length in an open

sea.

On the 25th, the Griper was made fast astern of the Hecla; and ber crew being sent to assist in manning our capstan, we proceeded

to warp the ships through the ice. This method, which is often adopted by our whalers, has the obvious advantage of applying the whole united force in separating the masses of ice which lie in the way of the first ship, allowing the second, or even third, to follow close astern, with very little obstruction. In this manner we had advanced about four miles to the westward, by eight P. M., after eleven hours of very laborious exertion; and having then come to the end of the clear water, and the weather being again foggy, the ships were secured in a deep "bight," or bay in a floe, called by the sailors, "a natural dock."..

On the 26th, there was clear water as far as we could see to the westward, which, on account of the fog, did not exceed the distance of three hundred yards. We made sail, however, and having groped our way for about half a mile, found the ice once more close in every direction, except that in which we had been sailing, obliging us to make the ships fast to a floe. I sent a boat away to endeavour to find a lane of clear water leading to the westward. She returned on board in an hour, without success, having with difficulty found her way to the ship, by our muskets and other signals. The latitude here, by observations, was 73° 02′ 17′′, long, by chronomoters, 60° 11′ 52", by which the drift of the ice in the last twenty-four hours appears to have been N. 1o E., five miles and three quarters, or in a direction nearly opposite to that of the wind. The soundings were two hundred and eight fathoms, on a muddy bottom.'...' On beginning to heave again, we found that the "hole" of water in which the Hecla lay, was now so completely enclosed by ice, that no passage out of it could be found. We tried every corner, but to no purpose; all the power we could apply, being insufficient to move the heavy masses of ice which had fixed themselves firmly between us and the lanes of water without. In the mean time, Lieutenant Liddon had succeeded in advancing about three hundred yards, and had placed the Griper's bow between two heavy floes, which it was necessary to separate before any farther progress could be made.'...

On the 27th, about 3 A. M., by a sudden motion of the ice, we succeeded in getting the Hecla out of her confined situation, and ran her up astern of the Griper. The clear water had made so much to the westward, that a narrow neck of ice was all that was now interposed between the ships and a large open space in that quarter. Both ships' companies were, therefore, ordered upon the ice to saw off the neck, when the floes suddenly opened, sufficiently to allow the Griper to push through under all sail. No time was lost in the

attempt to get the Hecla through after her; but, by one of those accidents to which this navigation is liable, and which renders it so precarious and uncertain, a piece of loose ice which lay between the two ships, was drawn after the Griper by the eddy produced by her motion, and completely blocked the narrow passage through which we were about to follow. Before we could remove this obstruction

by hauling it back out of the channel, the floes were again pressed together, wedging it firmly and immoveably betwixt them; the saws were immediately set to work, and used with great effect, but it was not till eleven o'clock that we succeeded, after seven hour's labour, in getting the Hecla into the lanes of clear water, which opened more and more to the westward. Our latitude, by account at noon, was 73° 05′ 56′′, the longitude, 60° 24′ 27′′. Being now favoured with a fresh breeze from the S. E. by S., we made considerable progress, though on a very crooked coast, to the northward and westward. In one respect the character of the ice was here altered, as we found a great many floes of "young" or "bay" ice, which had probably been newly formed in the sheltered situations afforded by the larger floes. To avoid the necessity of going round, or where no other channel presented itself, we ran through several of these bay-floes, which were from four to six inches thick, ploughing up the ice before the ship's stem, at the rate of five miles an hour. If they were not very broad, the Hecla did not lose her way, in passing through them. Frequently, however, she was stopped in the middle, which made it necessary to saw and break the ice a-head, till she made another start, and, having run a short distance in clear water, was again imbedded in the same manner. We passed one field of ice, about ten feet in thickness, and many miles in length, as we could not see over it from the mast-head. This was the only "field," according to the definition applied to that term by the whalers, that I had ever seen in Baffin's Bay. About eleven P. M. the lanes of open water a-head became very contracted, and at half-past eleven, in endeavouring to force through a floe, under a heavy press of canvas, the Hecla was completely wedged in, having run her own length into it, though its thickness was between a foot and eighteen inches. In the course of this day's sailing, the ships received many severe blows from the ice, but apparently suffered no damage. The concussions which the chronometers experienced, were, perhaps, such as few watches of this kind had ever before been exposed to; but we did not subsequently discover that any alteration had taken place in their rates, in consequence of them.

'On the 28th, after several hours' sawing, in which the men suffered much from rain and fatigue, we succeeded in getting clear; but after running quarter of a mile, were again beset in the same manner. By the time the Griper had joined us, we had once more unavoidably hampered the Hecla among the ice, and did not succeed in extricating her till four P. M., after which we found so much clear water as we proceeded, that, with the exception of a few streams and "patches," which we met with on the following day, and through which the ships sailed without much difficulty, we had now passed every impediment which obstructed our passage to Sir James Lancaster's Sound. The breadth of this barrier of ice, which occupies the middle of Baffin's Bay, and which had never before been crossed in this latitude at the same season, was eighty miles in a N. 63° W. direction.' ***

'On the 30th, the Griper detaining us considerably, and the sea being now sufficiently open to allow us to take her in tow, we hove to at nine A.M. for that purpose. We now seemed all at once to have got into the head quarters of the whales They were so numerous that I directed the number to be counted during each watch, and no less than eighty-two are mentioned in this day's log. Mr. Allison, the Greenland master, considered them generally as large ones, and remarked, that a fleet of whalers might easily have obtained a cargo here in a few days. It is, I believe, a common idea among the Greenland fishermen, that the presence of ice is necessary to ensure the finding of whales; but we had no ice in sight to-day, when they were most numerous. A noon we observed, in lat. 74° 01' 57", being the first meridian altitude we had obtained for four days, and differing from the dead reckoning only two miles, which is remarkable, considering the sluggishness of the compasses, and would seem to afford a presumptive proof that no southerly current exists in this part of Baffin's Bay. The long. by chronometers, was 75° 02′ 14′′. In the afternoon the wind broke us off from the N.N.W., which obliged us to cast off the Griper, and we carried all sail ahead to make the land. We saw it at half past five P.M., being the high land about Possession Bay, and at the same time several streams of loose but heavy ice came in sight, which a fresh breeze was drifting fast to the south eastward. Sir James Lancaster's Sound was now open to the westward of us, and the experience of our former voyage had given us reason to believe that the two best months in the year for the navigation of these seas were yet to come. This consideration, together with the magnificent view of the lofty Byam Martin mountains, which forcibly recalled to our minds the events of the preceding year, could not fail to animate us with expectation and hope. If any proof were wanting of the value of local knowledge in the navigation of the Polar Seas, it would be amply furnished by the fact of our having now reached the entrance of Sir James Lancaster's Sound just one month earlier than we had done in 1818, although we had then sailed above a fortnight sooner, with the same general object in view, namely, to penetrate to the western coast of Baffin's Bay, where alone the North-west passage was to be sought for. This difference is to be attributed entirely to the confidence which felt, from the experience gained on the former voyage, that an open sea would be found to the westward of the barrier of ice which occupies the middle of Baffin's Bay. Without that confidence it would have been little better than madness to have attempted a passage through so compact a body of ice, when no indication of a clear sea appeared beyond it.'

We make no apology for the length of this extract, feeling confident that its novelty will best recommend it to the reader. The time was now arriving, when the fate of the expedition, and perhaps the fortunes of its commander, were to be determi