obstacles, to
prevent being left behind,--light-hearted, obedient, and zealous, if my
heartfelt admiration of them could have lightened their labours, I
should have been glad indeed. Late in the evening, the "Intrepid" was
seen working inside of Wolstenholme Island: we made fast to a lofty
iceberg, to obtain a good view, for the most promising lead of water;
and the experienced eye of a quarter-master, Joseph Organ, enabled him
to detect the glisten of open water on the horizon to the westward. For
it we accordingly struck through the pack. Never were screw and steam
more taxed. To stop was to be beset for the winter, and be starved and
drifted Heaven knows where. An iron stem and a good engine did the
work,--I will not bore the non-professional reader how. A little before
midnight the "Resolute" and "Assistance" were seen, and by four o'clock
on the morning of the 2d September we were alongside of them. Shortly
afterwards our amateurs and visitors left us, and the three vessels
cruised about, waiting for the "Intrepid," it being generally
understood that when she rejoined the squadron we were to return to
England.

We learned that the ships had been in open water as high as the Cary
Islands: _they had seen no land on the west side, north of Cape
Clarence_. On Cary Islands they had found traces of the remote visits
of whalers, and had shot immense numbers (about 700) of birds, loons
especially. On one occasion they had been placed in trying
circumstances by a gale from the southward amongst the packed ice, the
extraordinary disappearance of which to the northward, was only to be
accounted for by supposing the ice of Baffin's Bay to have been blown
through Smith's Sound into the Polar Sea, a small gateway for so much
ice to escape by. In my opinion, however, the disappearance of the ice,
which a fortnight earlier had spread over the whole sea between the
Arctic Highlands and Jones's Sound, under the influence of southerly
gales, confirmed me the more strongly in my belief that the north-west
portion of Baffin's Bay is open, and forms no _cul-de-sac_ there any
more than it does in Jones's Sound, Lancaster Sound, or Pond's Bay.

From Hudson's Straits, in latitude 60 deg. N., to Jones's Sound, in
latitude 76 deg. N., a distance of 960 miles, we find on the western hand a
mass of islands, of every conceivable shape and size, with long and
tortuous channels intersecting the land in every direction; yet vain
men, anxious to