time, no less than one hundred and three of these immense bodies,
some of them from one to two hundred feet in height above the sea; and
it was necessary, in one or two instances, to tow the ships clear of
them with the boats.

From this time, indeed, the obstructions from the quantity, magnitude,
and closeness of the ice were such as to keep our people almost
constantly employed in heaving, warping, or sawing through it; and yet
with so little success, that, at the close of the month of July, we had
only penetrated seventy miles to the westward, or the longitude of about
62 deg. 10'.

_Sept_. 9th.--I shall, doubtless, be readily excused for not having
entered in this journal a detailed narrative of the obstacles we met
with, and of the unwearied exertions of the officers and men to overcome
them, during the tedious eight weeks employed in crossing this barrier.

The constant besetment of the ships, and our daily observations for
latitude and longitude, afforded a favourable opportunity for
ascertaining precisely the set of any currents by which the whole body
of ice might be actuated. By attending very carefully to all the
circumstances, it was evident that a daily set to the southward obtained
when the wind was northerly, differing in amount from two or three, to
eight or ten miles per day, according to the strength of the breeze; but
a northerly current was equally apparent, and fully to the same amount,
whenever the wind blew from the southward. A circumstance more
remarkable than these, however, forced itself strongly upon my notice at
this time, which was, that a _westerly_ set was very frequently
apparent, even against a fresh breeze blowing from that quarter. I
mention the circumstance in this place, because I may hereafter have to
offer a remark or two on this fact, in connexion with some others of a
similar nature noticed elsewhere.

With respect to the dimensions of the ice through which we had now
scrambled our way, principally by warping and towing, a distance of
between three and four hundred miles, I remarked that it for the most
part increased, as well in the thickness as the extent of the floes, as
we advanced westward about the parallel of 71 deg. During our subsequent
progress to the north, we also met with some of enormous dimensions,
several of the floes, to which we applied our hawsers and the power of
the improved capstan, being at their margin more than twenty feet above
the level of the sea;