Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/414

 June 5th.

I resume the narrative.

The march to the cache was a very tedious one, but we took it leisurely, and got through with it in sixteen hours, to find our food unmolested. The repeated halts to rest the dogs gave me abundant leisure to search among the limestone cliffs for further fossil remains, and my exertions were rewarded with a valuable collection. It is, perhaps, too much to say that they are fossils of the Silurian era, from a hasty examination; but I think it more than probable.

I had also opportunity to measure some of the masses of ice which had been forced upon the shore. In many places these masses were crowded together, forming an almost impassable barrier. In other places the ice-foot had been torn through, and in one spot a table sixty feet in thickness and forty yards across had been crowded on the sloping shore, pushing up the loose, rocky débris which lay at the base of the cliffs; and when the pack that had caused the disturbance had drifted away, this fragment was left with its lower edge above the tide. Around it were piled other masses; and, in order to pass it, we were obliged to climb far up the hill-side.

Our next day's journey was even more difficult, as we became entangled among deep snow-drifts below Cape Frazer, and, on account of the rotten condition of the ice lining the shore, we could not take to the ice-fields. We tried twice, and came near paying dearly for the experiment. One of the teams got in bodily, and was extricated with difficulty; while, on the other occasion, I, acting in my usual capacity of pilot, saved myself from a cold bath with my ice-pole, which, plunging through the rotten ice and disappear