We still sail northward, among sheets of ice, whose boundaries are not beyond our vision from the mast-head--these are "floes;" between them we find easy way, it is fair "sailing ice." In the clear sky to the north, a streak of lucid white light is the reflection from an icy surface; that is "ice-blink," in the language of these seas. The glare from snow is yellow, while open water gives a dark reflection. Northward still; but now we are in fog the ice is troublesome; a gale is rising. Now, if our ship had timbers, they would crack, and if she had a bell it would be tolling; if we were shouting to each other we should not hear, the sea is in a fury. With wild force its breakers dash against a heaped-up wall of broken ice, that grinds and strains and battles fiercely with the water. This is "the pack," the edge of a great ice-field broken by the swell. It is a perilous and exciting thing to push through pack ice in a gale. Now there is ice as far as eye can see, that is "an ice-field." Masses are forced up like colossal tombstones on all sides; our sailors call them "hummocks;" here and there the broken ice displays large "holes of water." Shall we go on? Upon this field, in 1827, Parry adventured with his men, to reach the North Pole, if that should be possible. With sledges and portable boats they labored on, through snow, and over hummocks; launching their boats over the larger holes of water. With stout hearts, undaunted by toil or danger, they went boldly on, though by degrees it became clear to the leaders of the expedition, that they were almost like mice upon a treadmill cage, making a great expenditure of leg for little gain. The ice was floating to the south with them, as they were walking to the north; still they went on. Sleeping by day to avoid the glare, and to get greater warmth during the time of rest, and travelling by night,--watch-makers' days and nights, for it was all one polar day,--the men soon were unable to distinguish noon from midnight. The great event of one day on this dreary waste was the discovery of two flies upon an ice hummock; these, says Parry, became at once a topic of ridiculous importance. Presently, after twenty-three miles walking, they only had gone one mile forward, the ice having industriously floated twenty-two miles in an opposite direction; and then, after walking forward eleven miles, they found themselves to be three miles behind the place from which they started. The party accordingly returned, not having reached the Pole, not having reached the eighty-third parallel, for the attainment of which there was a reward of a thousand pounds held out by government. They reached the parallel of eighty-two degrees, forty-five minutes, which was, and still is, the most northerly point trodden by the foot of man. From that point they returned. In those high latitudes they met with a phenomenon, common in alpine regions, as well as at the Pole, red snow. The red color being caused by the