On coming near Drift Point, they were better able to see the northern expanse outside the ice-wall which lined the coast and had interrupted the view. Lockwood saw a good deal of young ice interspersed with holes, and leads of open water. The main pack beyond seemed permeated by leads of what had been quite recently open water. Dark, misty “water-clouds” were seen everywhere northward. The young ice extended along shore in both directions as far as they could see, and out from shore a hundred yards or more. Beyond it was the polar pack, broken into small floes and rubble-ice, which had a glistening green appearance, as though recently pushed up by the grinding of the fields about it; all this was very surprising. They made their way over the snow-slopes of Drift Point and beyond until the near approach of the cliffs on one side and the ice-wall on the other brought them to a halt eighty miles from Fort Conger. Here they encamped with everything, having come thus far in six days. The ice-wall along here was from forty to fifty feet high. Outside, there was a good deal of ice lately formed, with smooth floes. They passed on near the foot of the bluffs, to see if there was any way of getting along the cliffs, making their way between the ice-wall and the foot of the steep slopes of the bluffs with great effort. The _débris_ of stone, etc., from the cliffs above made the route almost impracticable for a sledge. Before reaching Black Horn Cliffs, they were obliged to find a route along the top of the ice-wall, and thus got a short distance along the bottom of these vertical cliffs. But now, from a fissure in the cliffs above, came a steep drift of very hard snow, slanting down to the water at its foot. To scale the cliffs by means of this drift was dangerous, as a slip would inevitably have taken one directly into the water.