Our brig went crunching through all this jewellery; and, after a tortuous progress of five miles, arrested here and there by tongues which required the saw and ice-chisels, fitted herself neatly between two floes. Here she rested till toward morning, when the leads opened again, and I was able, from the crow’s-nest, to pick our way to a larger pool some distance ahead. In this we beat backward and forward, like gold-fish seeking an outlet from a glass jar, till the fog caught us again; and so the day ended.
Everything now depended upon practical ice knowledge; and, as I was not willing to trust any one else in selecting the leads for our course, I spent the whole day with M’Gary at the mast-head.
The North Water
At midnight we were clear of the bay and its myriads of discouragements. The North Water, our highway to Smith’s Sound, was fairly ahead.
We succeeded, not without some laborious boring and serious risks of entanglement among the broken ice-fields. But we managed, in every instance, to combat this last form of difficulty by attaching our vessel to large icebergs, which enabled us to hold our own, however swiftly the surface floes were pressing by us to the south. Four days of this scarcely varied yet exciting navigation brought us to the extended fields of the pack, and a fortunate north-wester opened a passage for us through them. We were now in the North Water.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE NORTH WATER TO THE WINTERING GROUND.
My diary continues:—“We passed the ‘Crimson Cliffs’ of Sir John Ross in the forenoon of August 5th. The patches of red snow, from which they derive their name, could be seen clearly at the distance of ten miles from the coast. It had a fine deep rose hue, and all the gorges and ravines in which the snows had lodged were deeply tinted with it. I had no difficulty now in justifying the somewhat poetical nomenclature which Sir John Franklin applied to this locality; for if the snowy surface were more diffused, as it is no doubt, earlier in the season, crimson would be the prevailing colour.