The expedition left Deptford in the beginning of May, 1819; rounded the northern point of the Orkneys, on the 20th of the same month; fell in with the first “stream” of ice, on the 18th of that ensuing; and crossed the Arctic circle, in long. 57° 27' W., at 4 p.m. on the 3d July, in the course of which day at least fifty ice-bergs were passed, many of them of large dimensions[1]. “Towards midnight,” says Lieutenant Parry, “the wind having shifted to the S.W., another extensive chain appeared: as we approached them, the breeze died away, and the ships’ heads were kept to the northward, only by the steerage way given to them by a heavy southerly swell, which, dashing the loose ice with tremendous force against the bergs, sometimes raised a white spray over the latter to the height of more than 100 feet, and being accompanied with a loud noise, exactly resembling the roar of distant thunder, presented a scene at once sublime and terrific. We could find no bottom near these ice-bergs with 110 fathoms of line. At 4 a.m. on the 4th, we came to a quantity of loose ice, which lay straggling among the bergs; and as there was a light breeze from the southward, and I was anxious to avoid, if possible, the necessity of going to the eastward, I pushed the Hecla into the ice, in the hope of being able to make our way through it. We had scarcely done so, however, before it fell calm, when the ship became perfectly unmanageable, and was for some time at the mercy of the swell, which drifted us fast towards the bergs. All the boats were immediately sent a-head to tow; and the Griper’s signal was made not to enter the ice. After two hours’ hard pulling, we succeeded in getting the Hecla back again into clear water, and to a sufficient distance from the ice-bergs, which it is very dangerous to approach when there is a swell. At noon we were in lat. 66" 50' 47", long. 57° 7' 56", being near the middle of the narrowest part of Davis’s Strait, which is here not more than fifty leagues across." Of the situation of the Hecla and her consort, on this day, there is an awfully grand view (in the quarto edition of “Parry’s First Voy-
- ↑ A stream is a long and narrow collection of broken masses of ice.
