_sallying the ship_, in aid of any of these resources, for widening the space in which she floated, so as to leave her free to move, where room might exist in advance. And here, I think it due to my Father to notice, in regard to the sallying of the ship,—an oscillating or rolling motion accomplished by the running of the crew, simultaneously, from side to side across the deck,—that the application of this most important auxiliary process was original with him, and, as far as I can remember, _now_ for the first time employed. It is a process, I may add, which has subsequently been adopted by fishermen and discoverers in general, as a mean which may often be made effective when, _under all other means_ for the promotion of progress, the wedged-up or ice-bound ship has become utterly immoveable. The manner in which these various operations were carried on was laborious in an extreme degree. Whilst the crew were allowed but limited and distant periods for rest, my Father’s exertions were such as, except under the pressure of circumstances involving the alternative of life or death, I think I never saw equalled. Not only was he always at his post directing, instructing, stimulating his men when progress was being made or attempted, but often looking out when the hands in general slept, or continuing his superintending toils, watch after watch, when portions of the crew had, alternately, their intervals of rest. In that severe service, indeed, few men could have so persevered. An extraordinary vigour and strength of constitution enabled him to accomplish, in labours of this kind, for which he had so high capabilities, what most men would have broken down in attempting. His exertions and talents, as we have indeed anticipated, had their due recompense in the most successful results of the enterprise. After passing an icy barrier of extraordinary tenaceousness and compactness, as well as of formidable extent, we reached a region, in the 80th parallel, of incomparably greater openness than we could have anticipated,—“a sea of water,”—to which we could see no bounds, but the ice we had passed through on the south side, and the land to the eastward. Under a brisk gale of wind and with fine clear weather, we were enabled rapidly to explore through a considerable portion of its extent, the immense interglacial sea upon which we had entered. It was found to stretch east and west, or E.N.E. and W.S.W. more nearly, to an extraordinary extent, and to be bounded to the northward as well as to the southward by packed ice of undeterminable extent,—the two bodies of ice being ten to twenty leagues apart. And within this vast opening, though not till after the northern and southern ices had closed together and joined to the westward, we made the principal part of our fishery.