No discovery of my life ever gave me greater gratification. The fortunes of the expedition were, at least for the present year, dependent upon an open season, and my most sanguine anticipations did not equal the apparent reality. In order that the reader may appreciate, in some measure, the satisfaction which I took in the prospect that opened before me, it is necessary that I should here pause to give a general description of the region we were about to traverse, and an explanation of the physical conditions which made this portion of the Greenland waters of such conspicuous importance in the destinies of our voyage. [Sidenote: MELVILLE BAY.] The shores of Melville Bay, as laid down on the maps, appear as a simple curved line of the Greenland coast; but the Melville Bay of the geographer comprehends much less than that of the mariner. The whalers have long called by that name the expansion of Baffin Bay which begins at the south with the "middle ice," and terminates at the north with the "North Water." The North Water is sometimes reached near Cape York, in latitude 76°, but more frequently higher up; and the "middle ice," which is more generally known as "the pack," sometimes stretches down to the Arctic Circle. This pack is made up of drifting ice-floes, varying in extent from feet to miles, and in thickness from inches to fathoms. These masses are sometimes pressed close together, having but little or no open space between them; and sometimes they are widely separated, depending upon the conditions of the wind and tide. They are always more or less in motion, drifting to the north, south, east, or west, with the winds and currents. The penetration of this barrier is usually an undertaking of weeks or months, and is ordinarily attended with much risk. Since the days when Baffin first penetrated these waters, in the _Discovery_, a vessel of fifty-eight tons burden, (it was in the year 1616,) a fleet of whale-ships has annually run this gauntlet. The fleet was once large, numbering upwards of a hundred sail; but of latter years it has been reduced to less than one tenth of its former magnitude. Great though the danger, it has always been a favorite route of the whale fishers. Many a stout ship has gone down with her sides mercilessly crushed in by the "thick-ribbed ice;" but those vessels which escape disaster almost uniformly return home with holds well filled with the blubber and oil of unlucky whales whose evil destiny led them to frequent the waters about Lancaster Sound, Pond's Bay, and the coasts below. [Sidenote: THE MIDDLE ICE.] The "middle ice" is always more or less in motion, and is never tightly closed up, even in midwinter. Of this we have abundant proof in the fate of the Steamer _Fox_, which was caught towards the close of the autumn, and released in the spring, after a perilous winter drift, down near the Arctic Circle.