it from going
either forward or backward? The ice to starboard cracked yesterday,
away beyond the bear-trap. The thickness of the solid floe was 11 1/2
feet (3.45 metres), but, besides this, other ice was packed on to it
below. Where it was broken across, the floe showed a marked stratified
formation, recalling the stratification of a glacier. Even the darker
and dirtier strata were there, the color in this case produced by the
brownish-red organisms that inhabit the water, specimens of which I
found at an earlier date. In several places the strata were bent and
broken, exactly in the same manner as the geological strata forming the
earth's crust. This was evidently the result of the horizontal pressure
in the ice at the time of packing. It was especially noticeable at
one place, near a huge mound formed during the last pressure. Here
the strata looked very much as they are represented in the annexed
drawing. [46]

It was extraordinary too to see how this floe of over three yards in
thickness was bent into great waves without breaking. This was clearly
done by pressure, and was specially noticeable, more particularly
near the pressure-ridges, which had forced the floe down so that its
upper surface lay even with the water-line, while at other places it
was a good half-yard above it, in these last cases thrust up by ice
pressed in below. It all shows how extremely plastic these floes are,
in spite of the cold; the temperature of the ice near the surface
must have been from 4 deg. Fahr. to 22 deg. Fahr. below zero (-20 deg. to -30 deg.
C.) at the time of these pressures. In many places the bending had
been too violent, and the floe had cracked. The cracks were often
covered with loose ice, so that one could easily enough fall into them,
just as in crossing a dangerous glacier.

"Saturday, February 24th. Observations to-day show us to be in 79 deg.
54' north latitude, 132 deg. 57' east longitude. Strange that we should
have come so far south when the north or northwest wind only blew
for twenty-four hours.

"Sunday, February 25th. It looks as if the ice were drifting eastward
now. Oh! I see pictures of summer and green trees and rippling
streams. I am reading of valley and mountain life, and I grow sick
at heart and enervated. Why dwell on such things just now? It will
be many a long day before we can see all that again. We are going
at the miserable pace of a snail, but not so surely as it goes. We
carry our house wit