mentioned that she had her little child carried
away by one of them a short time previous,
while playing on the shore a little distance
from her. The poor creature shed tears on
relating the catastrophe. At parting, several
presents were bestowed upon them, which
had the effect of eliciting promises of friendship
for us or for any of our white brethren
who might come on their coast."

Of the great perils encountered by Captain
M'Clure's ship the Investigator, before it was
locked up for two years in its winter quarters,
and of the huge power of the ice, one or two
little illustrations must be given. Once, after
a large floe had raised the vessel six feet,
another floe caught the mass of ice to which it
was attached, under an overhanging ledge,
and shouldered it up to a height of thirty feet.
As it rose above the foreyard, all the men
looked up in dread suspense; knowing that, if
it should be turned completely over, the whole
ship with those on board would instantly be
crushed beneath it. "This suspense," says
Captain M'Clure, "was but for a few minutes,
as the floe rent, carrying away with it a large
piece from the foundation of our asylum;
when it gave several fearful rolls and
resumed its former position; but, no longer
capable of resisting the pressure, it was
hurried onward with the drifting mass."
Again, on the same day, the ship, attached to
a large mass of ice, was driving down upon
a floe, and grounded in nine fathoms. If she
struck such a floe, she would be ground as
between millstones between it and her
own attendant floe-piece. To turn aside, was
to be wrecked upon the beach. The gunner's
mate was sent forward to destroy the obstacle
by blasting. "He could not, however," writes
Captain M'Clure, "find a sufficient space of
water to sink the charge; but, remarking a
large cavity upon the sea face of the floe, he
fixed it there, which so far succeeded that it
slightly fractured it in three places, which at
the moment was scarcely observable from the
heavy pressure it was sustaining. Those on
board, therefore, did not see that it was
broken. By this time the vessel was within
a few feet of it, and every one was on deck in
anxious suspense, awaiting what was
apparently the crisis of our fate. Most
fortunately the sternpost took it so fairly that the
pressure was fore and aft, bringing the whole
strength of the ship to bear. A heavy grind
which shook every mast, and caused beams
and decks to complain as she trembled to the
violence of the shock, plainly indicated that
the struggle would be but of short duration.
At this moment the stream-cable was carried
away, and several anchors drew; thinking
that we had now sufficiently risked the vessel,
orders were given to let go all the warps, and
with that order I had made up my mind that
in a few minutes she would be on the beach;
but, as it was sloping, conceived she might
still prove an asylum for the winter, and
possibly be again got afloat; while, should
she be crushed between these large grounded
pieces, she must inevitably go down in ten
fathoms, which would be certain destruction
to all; but before the orders could be obeyed,
a merciful Providence interposed, causing the
ice, which had been previously weakened, to
separate into three pieces, and it floated
onward with the mass, our stern still slightly
jammed against but now protected by it"
No wonder that among daily experiences of
this character, men have their littleness
crushed out of them.

Commander M'Clure and his men found
shelter from many perils in a harbour which
they called by a good Arctic name, the Bay
of Mercy, close by the passage into Barrow's
Straits; the existence of which solved the
problem of the north-west passage. There, in
regions never before visited by civilised man,
they were frozen in. They arrived there on
the twenty-fourth of September, eighteen
hundred and fifty-one. Happily the land about
them was remarkably well supplied with
game. It seemed to form the retired meeting-
place and feeding-ground of many animals.

When summer should have come to set
them at liberty, the ice was still firm. About
the middle of June "flocks of wild fowl," says
Captain M'Clure, "consisting of swans, geese,
and all descriptions of ducks, began to arrive;
but, finding no water, merely took a flight
round the north-west extreme of the land
and returned to the southward, from which
it would appear that the season is late;
indeed, the land is as much covered with
snow as in the depth of winter." So wrote
the ice-bound captain while the cold summer
passed by them, and the crew were employed
daily on the hills gathering sorrel; which
they all relished much, and ate with vinegar,
as a protection against scurvy.

In the autumn of that year Captain M'Clure,
having arranged to send home the weakly by
boat in the succeeding spring, prepared for a
prolonged detention. "Although," he writes,
"we had already been twelve months upon
two-thirds allowance, it was necessary to make
preparations for meeting eighteen months more
—a very severe deprivation and constitutional
test, but one," says quietly the true Arctic
seaman, "which the service we were employed
upon called for; the vessel being as sound as
the day she entered the ice. It would therefore
be discreditable to desert her in eighteen
hundred and fifty-three, when a favourable
season would run her through the straits and
admit of reaching England in safety." No
favourable season came. On the anniversary
of the ship's entering the Bay of Mercy—
which she did with the thermometer at thirty-
three and not a particle of ice upon the
water—there stood the thermometer at two,
and the whole place was frozen up, with
every indication of a very severe winter.

The winter proved indeed to be the severest
ever encountered by our sailors in the frozen
regions. In January the average height of