“Notwithstanding this sure token of the impossibility of proceeding much further, we continued to go due north for about nine versts, when we arrived at the edge of an immense break in the ice, extending east and west further than the eye could reach, and which at the narrowest part was more than a hundred fathoms across.... We climbed one of the loftiest ice hills, where we obtained an extensive view towards the north, and whence we beheld the wide, immeasurable ocean spread before our gaze. It was a fearful and magnificent, but to us a melancholy, spectacle. Fragments of ice of enormous size floated on the surface of the agitated ocean, and were thrown by the waves with awful violence against the edge of the ice-field on the further side of the channel before us. The collisions were so tremendous, that large masses were every instant broken away, and it was evident that the portion of ice which still divided the channel from the open ocean would soon be completely destroyed. Had we attempted to have ferried ourselves across upon one of the floating pieces of ice, we should not have found firm footing upon our arrival. Even on our side, fresh lanes of water were continually forming, and extending in every direction in the field of ice behind us. With a painful feeling of the impossibility of overcoming the obstacles which Nature opposed to us, our last hope vanished of discovering the land which we yet believed to exist.” Of the difficulties that confronted them upon their return, Admiral Von Wrangell writes:—