They found the entrance to Smith's Sound perfectly clear of ice, none drifting southward, although there was a fresh northerly breeze. The scene of the wreck of the _Polaris_ was visited, and either the log, or a copy, of the ill-fated vessel discovered. The next point touched at was Cape Isabella, on the 29th of July. Here a cairn with a small depot of provisions was erected, at an elevation of 700 feet from the water, by the crew of the _Alert_, while the _Discovery_ pushed forward. On the 30th of July the _Discovery_ was beset off Cape Sabine, by a close pack five or six miles broad. The _Alert_, having bored through it, joined her, and both ships spent three days, sometimes getting under weigh and attempting to escape, until the 4th of August, when the pack moving forward enabled them to round Cape Sabine. Proceeding twenty miles farther along the south side of Hayes Sound, they put into a snug harbour, near which was discovered a valley with abundance of vegetation, and traces of musk oxen. Finding, however, that there was no channel in that direction, they bore away to the eastward, towards Cape Albert. Here a clear space of water appeared along the shore of the mainland; but the coast affording no protection, they ran into the pack, with the expectation of forcing their way through. In this they were disappointed, and, unable to extricate themselves, they were drifting at a fearful rate towards an iceberg. The _Discovery_ seemed to be in the greatest danger, but suddenly the floe wheeled round, and the icy mountain was seen tearing its way through the surface ice directly down on the _Alert_. Her destruction seemed inevitable, when, at the distance of scarcely a hundred yards, the iceberg turned over, the floe splitting up, when the ship, although nipped, made her escape. They both then got round in the wake of the iceberg. For the next twenty-four hours they were struggling towards the shore, through ice four feet thick, amidst bergs of 300 feet in diameter, although only from twenty to forty high. At length successful, they reached, on the 8th of August, the land of Victoria. Thus they pushed forward, sometimes struggling with the ice, and boring their way through the packs, at others making progress by an open space near the shore. So closely-packed was the ice, that the channel by which the ships advanced was often immediately closed astern, so that they would have found it as difficult to return as to proceed northward. On the 25th August, after many hairbreadth escapes, a sheltered harbour was reached on the west side of the channel in Hall's Basin, north of Lady Franklin's Sound, in latitude 81 degrees 44 minutes north. Here the _Discovery_ was secured for the winter, while the _Alert_, as it had been arranged, pushed onwards, for the purpose of proceeding as far as possible through the supposed open Polar Sea, and reaching, some might have vainly hoped, the Pole itself.