At midnight, when within about a mile of Cape Beechey, ice was encountered stretching right across the channel and pressing so tightly in to the land as to form a dead block to our farther advance. We had then by estimation reached the 82° parallel of latitude. This check was a great damper to our hopes, especially as no bays, or protection of any description for the ship from the pack, could be found in our immediate vicinity. Our only resource was to return a few miles to the southward and there, in a slight indentation of the land, affording little or no protection, secure the ship to an ice floe, and employ ourselves at once with the rather heavy operations connected with shifting the rudder. This work was performed in about three hours. In the mean time, a small herd of musk oxen having been observed on shore, our sportsmen were despatched in pursuit, and we soon had the satisfaction of hearing that they had succeeded in shooting three, the remainder of the herd having escaped over the hills. This was a very welcome addition to our stock of fresh meat. Our mizzen-rigging was now literally groaning with the amount of meat suspended there; for, in addition to the recent accumulation of musk-ox flesh, the remainder of our sheep, some seven or eight in number, had been slaughtered and added to the general stock. So hard were the portions frozen, that they were very truthfully compared to the legs of mutton and sides of sheep made of wood usually seen hanging in the front of a butcher's shop in a pantomime! The bay in which we had taken refuge was, in consequence of the work there performed, named "Shift-Rudder Bay." _Sunday, August 29th._--At noon we were again under weigh, Captain Nares having ascended a high hill during the forenoon, from which he had observed an opening in the pack by which we might proceed. Cape Beechey was easily rounded; but, in consequence of the floes closing into the land, we had a very narrow escape of being caught whilst going round Cape Frederick VII., and it was only by pressing the ship at her utmost speed that we succeeded in rounding it in safety. Two minutes after we were round, the floe came into contact with the high steep side of the cape, crumbling against it and piling up hummock on hummock from the irresistible force of the outside pressure. What would have been the fate of our poor little frail ship had she been caught between these two stupendous works of nature? The ice had now assumed a totally different character from any that we had hitherto seen, being infinitely more massive and heavy. The thickness was estimated at from eighty to one hundred feet, whilst the hummocks formed along the shore and round the edges of the floes were fully twenty-five and thirty feet in height.