“To the south every thing is in drifting motion—water, sludge, frost-smoke—but no seals.
“We caught a poor little fox to-day in a dead-fall. We ate him as an anti-scorbutic.
“October 6, Sunday. A dismal day; the wind howling, and the snow, fine as flour, drifting into every chink and cranny. The cold quite a nuisance, although the mercury is up again to +6°. It is blowing a gale. What if the floe, in which we are providentially glued, should take it into its head to break off, and carry us on a cruise before the wind!
“8 P.M. Took a pole, and started off to make a voyage of discovery around our floe. After some weary walking over hummocks, and some uncomfortable sousings in the snow-dust, found that our cape has dwindled to an isthmus. In the midst of snow and haze, of course, I did not venture across to the other ice.
“We look now anxiously at the gale—turning in, clothes on, so as to be ready for changes.
“12 Midnight. They report us adrift. Wind, a gale from the northward and westward. An odd cruise this! The American expedition fast in a lump of ice about as big as Washington Square, and driving, like the shanty on a raft, before a howling gale.
“October 7, Monday. Going on deck this morning, a new coast met my eyes. Our little matrix of ice had floated at least twenty miles to the south from yesterday’s anchorage. The gale continues; but the day is beautifully clear, and we have neared the western coast enough to recognize the features of the limestone cliffs, although many a wrinkle of them is now pearl-powdered with snow-drift.
“Prominent among these was Advance Bluff; and to the south of it, a great indentation in the limestone escarpment, which ran back into a gray distance—a sort of gorge, with a summer water-course. Further off. Point Innes again, and the shingle beach of ‘the Graves’; and a high bluff-like cape or headland to the southward and westward, which the captain supposes to be Barlow’s Inlet.
“10 P.M. Our master got an observation this evening of a Aquila (circum-meridian altitude), giving us a latitude of 74° 54′ 07″. The seat of our late resting place was in latitude 75° 24′ 52″ N. We have therefore voyaged 30 miles 45 seconds since this new start. At this rate, should the wind continue, another day will carry us again into Lancaster Sound.