The progress of the _Dorothea_ and the _Trent_ under the respective commands of Captain David Buchan and Lieutenant-Commander John Franklin (later Sir John Franklin) was delayed by fog and storm until they sighted Cherie Island, latitude 74° 33´ N., and longitude 17° 40´ E., famous for its herds of walruses from which the Muscovy Company had derived much profit by sending ships to the island for oil, the crew capturing as many as a thousand animals in the course of six or seven hours. The ships now encountered small floes and huge masses of ice, which augmented the difficulties of progress, and this Lieutenant Beechey, the clever artist and interesting narrator of the voyage, describes as follows:— “There was, besides, on the occasion an additional motive for remaining up; very few of us had ever seen the sun at midnight, and this night happening to be particularly distorted by refraction, and sweeping majestically along the northern horizon, it was the object of imposing grandeur, which riveted to the deck some of our crew, who would perhaps have beheld with indifference the less imposing effect of the icebergs; or it might have been a combination of both these phenomena; for it cannot be denied that the novelty occasioned by the floating masses was materially heightened by the singular effect produced by the very low altitude at which the sun cast his fiery beams over the icy surface of the sea. “The rays were too oblique to illuminate more than the inequalities of the floes, and falling thus partially on the grotesque shapes, either really assumed by the ice or distorted by the unequal refraction of the atmosphere, so betrayed the imagination that it required no great exertion of fancy to trace in various directions architectural edifices, grottos, and caves here and there glittering as if with precious metals. So generally, indeed, was the deception admitted, that, in directing the route of the vessel from aloft, we for a while deviated from our nautical phraseology, and shaped our course for a church, a tower, a bridge, or some similar structure, instead of for humps of ice, which were usually designated by less elegant appellations. “After sighting the southern promontory of Spitzbergen, the two ships were parted in a severe gale. The snow fell in heavy showers, and several tons’ weight of ice accumulated about the sides of the brig (the _Trent_) and formed a complete casing to the planks, which secured an additional layer at each plunge of the vessel. So great, indeed, was the accumulation about the bows, that we were obliged to cut it away repeatedly with axes to relieve the bow-sprit from the enormous weight that was attached to it, and the ropes were so thickly covered with ice, that it was necessary to beat them with large sticks to keep them in a state of readiness for any evolution that might be rendered necessary, either by the appearance of ice, to leeward or by a change of wind.”