dogs, besides a few stores, of which we stood in need; so, sailing up the coast, we arrived off the harbour on the night of May 10, but an impenetrable stream of loose ice blockaded the entrance. It was a wild night, and snowing heavily; sea, air, ice islands and icebergs seemed all mingled in one common haze. We endeavoured to haul off the land, and near midnight we narrowly escaped destruction upon an island, which, seen suddenly on the lee-beam, was at first taken for a berg. We all thought our ship must be dashed upon the rocks, and we were only saved by the presence of mind and seamanship of our Captain, who never left the deck, and wore the ship within a few yards of the shore. We anchored next day at the Whale-fish Islands, and fell in there with the Jane and Heroine whalers, whose captains gave us a true Scotch welcome, and ransacked their ships to find some little comforts for us. We again tasted the roast beef of old England. From the islands, we crossed to Godhavn, where finding the harbour still full of ice, we hauled into a rocky creek outside, a perfect little dock just capable of holding the ship, but exposed to southerly winds.
By the 25th of May we were prepared for another and final attempt to accomplish our mission, and to try our fortunes in the ice. We were certainly sobered down considerably by our late severe lesson; but although less confident in our own powers, a steady determination to do our best prevailed throughout the ship. Passing again through the Waigat, we stopped at the coal-deposits to fill up with fuel, and we shot a few ptarmigan while thus detained. We next stopped at Saunderson's Hope, "the Cape where the fowls do breed," but it was yet too early for eggs, and as the looms had no young to protect, they flew away in thousands at every discharge of a gun; we got but few of these, in our opinion, delicious birds. On the 31st, we made fast to an iceberg off Upernavik, to await the breaking up of the ice in Melville Bay. When we were in these latitudes the previous year, all things living were migrating southward, but now constant flights of sea-birds streamed northward, night and day, towards their breeding-places and feeding-grounds, and by sitting on the rocky points, and shooting them as they passed, we could generally make a fair bag. We were now almost subsisting on eider ducks and looms.
On June the 6th, we commenced our ice-struggles in Melville Bay, endeavouring, according to the usual mode of navigation, to push up, between the main pack and the ice still attached to the land, on all occasions when the winds moved the pack out, and left a space or lane of water. While thus following up the coast, on the 7th, we ran upon a reef of sunken and unknown rocks, and, on the tide falling, we lay over in such a manner as to threaten to fill upon the water again rising. We succeeded, however, in heaving off without damage.
After many escapes from being squeezed by the ice closing upon the land, and after three weeks of intense labour, we reached Cape York on June 26th. We there communicated with the natives who had so much assisted Dr. Kane, when he wintered in Smith Sound. These poor
