I felt that a few days at the
commencement of the season, short as it is in these regions, might be of
great importance as to the result of our enterprise, while the ship
seemed to be so far secure from any immediate danger as to justify my
leaving her, with a reduced crew, in her present situation. The nature
of the ice was, beyond all comparison, the most unfavourable for our
purpose that I remember to have ever seen. It consisted only of loose
pieces, scarcely any of them fifteen or twenty yards square; and when
any so large did occur, their, margins were surrounded by the smaller
ones, thrown up by the recent pressure into ten thousand various shapes,
and presenting high and sharp angular masses at every other step. The
men compared it to a stone-mason's yard, which, except that the stones
were of ten times the usual dimensions, it indeed very much resembled.
The only inducement to set out over such a road was the certainty that
floes and fields lay beyond it, and the hope that they were not _far_
beyond it. In this respect, indeed, I considered our present easterly
position as a probable advantage, since the ice was much less likely to
have been disturbed to any great extent northward in this meridian than
to the westward clear of the land, where every southerly breeze was sure
to be making havoc among it.
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