whole of the meat also tasted more or less,
and especially the heart. It furnished us with four hundred and
twenty-one pounds of beef, which was served to the crews as usual,
in lieu of their salt provisions, and was very much relished by
us, notwithstanding the peculiarity of its flavour.[*] The meat
was remarkably fat, and, as it hung up in quarters, looked as fine
as any beef in an English market. A small seal, killed by the
Griper's people, was also eaten by them; and it was generally
allowed to be very tender and palatable, though not very sightly
in its appearance, being of a disagreeable red colour.

[Footnote: Some pieces of this meat which we brought to England
were found to have acquired a much more disagreeable flavour than
when first killed, though they had not undergone putrefaction in
the slightest degree.]

At ten P.M. the whole body of ice, which was then a quarter of a
mile from us, was found to be drifting in upon the land, and the
ship was warped back a little way to the westward, towards that
part of the shore which was most favourable for allowing her to be
forced up on the beach. At eleven o'clock, the piece of a floe
which came near us in the afternoon, and which had since drifted
back a few hundred yards to the eastward, received the pressure of
the whole body of ice as it came in. It split across in various
directions with a considerable crash, and presently after we saw a
part, several hundred tons in weight, raised slowly and
majestically, as if by the application of a screw, and deposited
on another part of the floe from which it had broken, presenting
towards us the surface that had split, which was of a fine blue
colour, and very solid and transparent. The violence with which
the ice was coming in being thus broken, it remained quiet during
the night, which was calm, with a heavy fall of snow.

The mass of ice which had been lifted up the preceding day being
drifted close to us on the morning of the 10th, I sent Lieutenant
Beechey to measure its thickness, which proved to be forty-two
feet; and as it was a piece of a regular floe, this measurement
may serve to give some idea of the general thickness of the ice in
this neighbourhood.

I began to consider whether it would not be advisable, whenever
the ice would allow us to move, to sacrifice a few miles of the
westing we had already made, and to run along the margin of the
floes, in order to endeavour to find an opening leading to the