Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/179



the inauspicious circumstances in which we were placed, the arrival of the new year was hailed by us all with the same feelings of confident hope and cheerfulness which had animated our exertions throughout the last season's operations in these regions: and although we had found the pack to extend much farther to the northward than on the former occasion, and were at this time beset in so dense a portion of it, that not the least hole of water could be seen amongst it, presenting to our view an apparently impenetrable mass, as far as the eye could discern from the mastheads of our ships, yet we were encouraged to hope that the clear water was at no great distance to the southward of us; for we found the ice in which r e were enclosed continue to move to the northward before every southerly breeze: it must therefore have left clear water at the place it originally occupied, and from which it was drifting. We had already advanced two hundred and fifty miles through the pack; arid from its breadth last season, not much exceeding two hundred miles, we could not but expect to be soon released, and enabled to renew our exploration at the point of the barrier where we had left off last year. Our observations to-day at