For months afterwards the same harsh sound was to be heard outside our barrier, till it became familiar and commonplace. It can be very closely imitated by rubbing dinner plates together. As soon as the position of the ship ceased to claim immediate attention, many an anxious look was cast over the chaos of ice beyond in search of the coast-line to the northwards. The truth broke on us very slowly. President’s Land was not there. The shore off which we lay curved to the left in a broad bay, and thirty or forty miles north-west of the ship the land ended in an abrupt cape. Behind us, and beyond Robeson Channel, Greenland spread away to the eastward, dwindling off in a perspective of rounded snow-covered hills, while to the north between these two lands’ ends there was nothing but an icy horizon. [Illustration: PLATE IV.—FLOEBERG BEACH AND THE POLAR SEA, LOOKING NORTH FROM THE CREST OF CAPE RAWSON, JULY, 1876.—p. 29. Where Robeson Channel opens out into the Polar Sea, the cliffs of Grant Land give place to a more shelving shore. This sketch, made late in July, 1876, and looking due north across the winter quarters of H.M.S. “Alert” at Floeberg Beach, shows the poleward prospect from the last of the cliffs. The coast-line curves away to the west into Black Cliff Bay, then turns north, and ends in the peaked mountains of Cape Joseph Henry, the point from which the northern sledge-parties started. Patches of melting snow, under Cairn Hill on the left, and under the slaty crest in the foreground (where some pink saxifrage is still in flower), send rivulets across the mud-flats to the South Ravine, and help to flood the green one-season ice between the grounded edge of the perennial pack and the shore. The floes are mapped out by hedges of hummocks, and look deceptively smooth from this height.]