The Expedition left Disco on 15th July, and steamed northward between the island and the mainland. Then, making a short halt at Rittenbenk, it stood down the Waigat. At a distance it seemed as if the whole strait was blocked with icebergs; we, however, found broad leads of water between them, smooth as a mirror, but for an occasional swell, as some great fragment slipped into the sea with a roar like a distant park of artillery. There, with the most earnest wishes for our success, our friends of the “Valorous” bade us adieu. An hour afterwards we found ourselves cruising about amongst the bergs in a thick fog. Every now and then a white mass would be seen gleaming ahead; down would go the helm just in time to avoid collision, and the sound of the sea in the azure hollows along its sides would scarcely be gone when the helm was again hard over to clear another. It was evidently advisable to wait till the fog lifted, and accordingly the ships were brought up to a berg, and some men despatched to clamber up and secure an ice anchor; but at the first blow of the ice gouge, down slid a great shoulder of the berg, carrying with it one of our men, and nearly overwhelming the boat in its surge. As the water calmed, blue lumps of ice shot up to the surface here and there, and presently “Francombe” bobbed up amongst them swimming vigorously for the boat, chilly, but nothing the worse for his dive. Next morning the fog disappeared, and leaving Hare Island on our left, we stood out to sea. Four days afterwards our stock of dogs was completed at Proven, a little settlement where neither dogs nor men seemed over well off for food. Here, too, we embarked the veteran Hans as dog-driver for H.M.S. “Discovery.” The records of Kane, Hayes, and Hall have made his name, but not his worth, familiar to every reader. Undeterred by the fate of two out of the three ships in which he had served, he again ventured into Smith’s Sound ice. The same evening, steaming towards the low midnight sun, we passed close under the magnificent cliffs of Sanderson’s Hope, a perpendicular wall of rock 1000 feet high, cleft by a narrow fiord like the portal of a colossal ruin. We could not but regret that time forbade us to explore its blue recesses. [Illustration: SANDERSON’S HOPE.] A mile or two further on, our ships stopped for an hour and secured a sufficient number of “looms” to supply two dinners of fresh food to all hands. The slaughter of the poor birds was most unmerciful, but they made excellent soup and pies, and tasted like hare. Next day, towing the “Discovery” in order to save fuel, we groped our way in a dense fog through a labyrinth of rocks into the harbour of Upernivik, the most northern civilised settlement on the globe. Henceforward we would be beyond the reach of any regular communication with home; accordingly, our last letters were landed to await the departure of the next Danish brig.