92

Mode of Travelling.

our usual mode of proceeding. It was my intention to travel wholly at night, and to rest by day, there being of course constant daylight in these regions during the summer season. The advantage of this plan, which was occasionally deranged by circumstances, consisted, first, in our avoiding the intense and oppressive glare from the snow during the time of the sun's greatest altitude, so as to prevent, in some degree, the painful inflammation in the eyes, called 'snow blindness,' which is common in all snowy countries. We also thus enjoyed greater warmth during the hours of rest, and had a better chance of drying our clothes; besides which, no small advantage was derived from the snow being harder at night for travelling. The only disadvantage of this plan was, that the fogs were sometimes more frequent and more thick by night than by day, though even in this respect there was less difference than might have been supposed, the temperature during the twenty-four hours undergoing but little variation. This travelling by night and sleeping by day so completely inverted the natural order of things, that it was difficult to persuade ourselves of the reality. Even the officers and myself, who were all furnished with pocket chronometers, could not always bear in mind at what part of the twenty-four hours we had arrived; and there were several of

Journey on the Ice.

93

the men who declared, and I believe truly, that they never knew night from day during the whole excursion."

The party must have been grievously disappointed on finding the state of the ice wholly the reverse of what it had been represented before setting out. Instead of being a fine, smooth level plain, "over which a coach might have been driven many leagues"; instead of compact floes, it consisted entirely of small loose and rugged masses, obliging them to make three journeys, and sometimes four, with the boats and baggage, and to launch several times across narrow pools of water.

July 1st brought no better ice: the soft snow was most fatiguing. Parry continues the narrative:—

"As soon as we arrived at the other end of the floe, or came to any difficult place, we mounted one of the highest hummocks of ice near at hand (many of which were fifteen to twenty-five feet above the sea), in order to obtain a better view around us, and nothing could well exceed the dreariness which such a view presented. The eye wearied itself in vain to find an object but ice and sky to rest upon, and even the latter was often hid from our view by the dense and dismal fogs which so generally prevailed. For want of variety the most trifling circumstances engaged a more than ordinary share of our attention; a passing gull, a

94

A Difficult Route.

mass of ice of unusual form, became objects which our situation and circumstances magnified into ridiculous importance; and we have since often smiled. to remember the eager interest with which we regarded many insignificant occurrences. It may well be imagined, then, how cheering it was to turn from this scene of inanimate desolation to our two little boats in the distance, to see the moving figures of our men winding with their sledges among the hummocks, and to hear once more the sound of human voices breaking the stillness of this icy wilderness. In some cases Lieut. Ross and myself took separate routes to try the ground, which kept us almost continually floundering among deep snow and water. The sledges having been brought up as far as we had explored, we all went back for the boats; each boat's crew, when the road was tolerable, dragging their own, and the officers labouring equally hard with the men. It was thus we proceeded for nine miles out of every ten that we travelled over ice, for it was very rarely indeed that we met with a surface sufficiently level and hard to drag all our loads at one journey, and in a great many instances during the first fortnight we had to make three journeys with the boats and baggage; that is, to traverse the same road five times over."

The present writer may here, without disparaging