es
being intended to facilitate the removal of the pieces thus
detached by first pulling them out with strong purchases, and then
floating them down the canal to the sea without. Nothing could
exceed the alacrity with which this laborious work was undertaken,
and continued daily from six in the morning till eight at night,
with the intermission only of mealtimes: nor could anything be
more lively and interesting than the scene which now presented
itself to an observer on the southeast point. The day was
beautifully clear, the sea open as far as the eye could stretch to
the northward, and the "busy hum" of our people's voices could at
times be heard mingling with the cheerful though fantastic songs
with which the Greenland sailors are accustomed at once to beguile
their labour, and to keep the necessary time in the action of
sawing the ice. The whole prospect, together with the hopes and
associations excited by it, was, to persons cooped up as we had
been, exhilarating beyond conception.

In the course of the first week we had completed the two side
cuts, and also two shorter ones in the space between the ships;
making in all a length of two thousand three hundred feet on each
side of the intended canal, the thickness of the ice being in
general four feet, but in one or two places (where the junction of
the sea-ice with the bay-floe occasioned some squeezing) above ten
feet and a half, scarcely allowing our longest saws to work.
Laborious as this part of the operation had been, we soon found it
likely to prove the least troublesome of the whole; for, on
endeavouring to pull out the pieces in the manner at first
intended, every effort failed, till at length we were reduced to
the necessity of cutting each block diagonally before it could be
moved from its place. After a week's experience, we also learned
that much time had been lost in completing the whole of the
lateral cuts at once; for these, partly from frost, and partly by
the closing together of the sides of the canal, all required
sawing a second, and in some places even a third time. It was
surprising, also, to see how powerful a resistance was occasioned
by the "sludge" produced in sawing, or, as the sailors called it,
the "sawdust," continuing in the cut, and appearing to act, like
oil interposed between two plates of glass, in keeping the masses
united. In some cases, also, a saw was squeezed so tight by the
pressure of the ice in the cut, that it became nec