over which they were travelling so laboriously towards the north, was
itself drifting more rapidly to the south than the distances which
they could accomplish. Thus, the last three days having been spent in
this disheartening and fruitless toil,--half the provisions being
exhausted,--some of the men falling sick, and being reported unfit for
exertion,--the scurvy threatening them,--and no hope of any favourable
change remaining--our brave countrymen were compelled to abandon their
impracticable design. They accordingly returned to the Hecla, and on
the 24th of September put into Longhope, in the Orkneys, without
having experienced any loss by death. The whole period occupied in
these exertions on the ice is stated to have been sixty-one days.

The highest latitude to which the Hecla reached was 81 deg. 6 min.
believed to be the farthest north that ever a ship made her way; so
that all that was made in the boats was 1 deg. 39 min. At the farthest
point north, no barrier of ice was seen, so that the idea of such a
barrier always existing may now be dismissed. The ice found by the
present expedition was of a very chaotic form. For about a mile,
perhaps, it might be tolerably smooth; but at every interval huge
ridges were crushed up by the action of tides and currents. No sooner
was this obstacle over, and one of these rugged and precipitous masses
overcome, than another appeared. There was plenty of fresh water on
the surface, but towards the end of the attempt, when the rains fell,
the ridges separated, and between them the salt sea flowed like so
many canals. It was found impossible to make any use of the rein-deer
in dragging the boats; and as there were no means of feeding dogs (as
once proposed,) the whole work was performed by personal labour.
Officers and men, twenty-eight in number, were alike harnessed to the
tackle, and wrought in common at the exhausting toil. Their time for
stalling in the _morning_ (their morning being the beginning of the