the same material attached to the "pulk" or sledge, and passing
between his legs, and one rein, fastened like a halter about his neck,
this intelligent and docile animal is perfectly under the command of an
experienced driver, and performs astonishing journeys over the softest
snow. When the rein is thrown over on the off side of the animal, he
immediately sets off at a full, trot, and stops short the instant it is
thrown back to the near side. Shaking the rein over his back is the only
whip that is required. In a short time after setting off, they appear to
be gasping for breath, as if quite exhausted; but, if not driven too
fast at first, they soon recover this, and then go on without
difficulty. The quantity of _clean_ moss considered requisite for each
deer per day is four pounds; but they will go five or six days without
provender, and not suffer materially. As long as they can pick up snow
as they go along, which they like to eat quite clean, they require no
water; and ice is to them a comfortable bed. It may well be imagined,
with such qualifications, how valuable these animals seemed likely to
prove to us; and the more we became accustomed, and, I may say, attached
to them, the more painful became the idea of the necessity which was
likely to exist, of ultimately having recourse to them as provision for
ourselves.

Our preparations were completed on the 27th, but the wind continuing
fresh from the northwestern quarter in the offing, we had no prospect of
making any progress till the morning of the 29th, when we weighed at six
A.M.

On the 5th of May, being in latitude 73 deg. 30', and longitude 7 deg.
28' E., we met with the first straggling mass of ice, after which, in
sailing about 110 miles in a N.N.W. direction, there was always a number
of loose masses in sight; but it did not occur in continuous "streams"
till the morning of the 7th, in latitude 74 deg. 55', a few miles to the
eastward of the meridian of Greenwich. On the 10th several whalers were
in sight, and Mr. Bennett, the master of the Venerable, of Hull, whom we
had before met in Baffin's Bay in 1818, came on board. From him I
learned that several of the ships had been in the ice since the middle
of April, some of them having been so far to the westward as the island
of Jan Mayen, and that they were now endeavouring to push to the
northward. They considered the ice to offer more obstacles to the
attainment of this object than it had done for many