ave found the long-talked-of open Polar Sea,
instead of which ice, evidently of great age and thickness, the
accumulation, it might be, of centuries, and resembling rather low
floating icebergs massed together, than the ordinary appearance of
salt-water. When two vast floes meet, the lighter portions floating
between the closing masses are broken up and thrown over their surface,
sometimes to the height of fifty feet above the water, forming a
succession of ice-hills of the most rugged description.

Although Captain Nares saw at once the almost impracticable character of
the ice in the direction of the Pole, and which there was every
probability would prove continuous, he resolved, as soon as the weather
would allow, to despatch a sledge party in the desired direction. The
supposed Polar Sea was appropriately named the "Palaeocrystic Sea," or
"Sea of Ancient Ice."

The ice hitherto met with was seldom more than from two to ten feet in
thickness; that which was now stretched before them was found to measure
from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet in depth, its lowest part
being fifteen feet above the water-line. This enormous thickness was
produced in consequence of its being shut up in the Polar Sea, with few
outlets by which it could escape to the southward, the ice of one season
being added in succession to that of the previous year.

The two ships were now in their winter quarters,--the _Alert_ off the
coast of Grant's Land, with a bleak shore to the southward, and to the
north a vast wilderness of rugged ice, extending in all probability to
the Pole, in latitude 82 degrees 27 minutes, many miles farther than any
ship had ever attained; while the _Discovery_ was seventy miles off, in
a harbour on the coast of Greenland, inside Smith's Sound, in latitude
81 degrees 45 minutes. Lieutenant Rawson, with a party of men, had come
on board the _Alert_ in order to convey notice of her position to the
_Discovery_. He made two determined attempts to perform the journey
between the two ships without success, owing to the ice remaining
unfrozen till late in the autumn in Robson's Channel. He and his men
had therefore to pass the winter on board the _Alert_. As soon as the
safety of the _Alert_ was secured, sledge parties were sent on along the
shore to the southward and westward, with boats and provisions for the
use of the travelling parties in the spring, under the command of
Commander Markham and Lieutenant Aldric