Both ships were now free to voyage southward as soon as the ice would let them leave Discovery Harbour. Bellot Island formed a sort of natural breakwater, and kept the floes outside, so that the bay all round the ships was often almost clear of ice, but beyond the island the pack showed little disposition to let us through. In Lady Franklin Strait, promising-looking lines of water wound amongst the floes in many directions, but they were only ⏟ shaped cracks thawed wide at the surface, and mere fissures six or eight feet under water. Looked down on from the cliffs of the island, they marbled the white floes with veins of green, very different from the inky blackness of real leads. But that the rapid approach of winter made escape less likely every day, we were well content to wait our opportunity, for there were many places in the neighbourhood of the “Discovery’s” winter quarters that we of the “Alert” were anxious to see. First amongst these was the coal seam discovered by her naturalist, Mr. Hart. This was only about four miles off amongst the hills to the north, but, unfortunately, in such an inaccessible position that little more than a few pounds weight of the fuel could be brought down to the ship. Coal so far north was such a curiosity, and the fossils found near it told such a strange story, that everyone wanted specimens, and there was no difficulty in getting up a strong party to visit the “mine.” So one morning a large boat-load of eager geologists, armed with picks and hammers, crossed the mouth of the harbour. Like the “breakwater” of Bellot Island, the spot where we landed bore traces of a visit from Eskimo at some very far-off time. A collection of stones marked by fire, splinters of burnt drift-wood and fragments of bones broken to get the marrow out, told plainly of some wandering hunter’s camp-fire. Half-a-mile further on, one of our party picked up a fragment of a human thigh-bone, brown and weather-worn and gnawed by foxes. Strange to say, we could not find any other part of the skeleton.