“The formation of young ice upon the surface of the water is the circumstance which most decidedly begins to put a stop to the navigation of these seas, and warns the seaman that his season of active operations is nearly at an end. It is indeed scarcely possible to conceive the degree of hindrance occasioned by this impediment, trifling as it always appears before it is encountered. When the sheet has acquired the thickness of about half an inch, and is of considerable extent, a ship is liable to be stopped by it, unless favoured by a strong and free wind; and even when retaining her way through the water at the rate of a mile an hour her course is not always under the control of the helmsman, though assisted by the nicest attention to the action of the sails; but it depends upon some accidental increase or decrease in the thickness of the sheet of ice with which one bow or the other comes in contact. Nor is it possible in this situation for the boats to render their usual assistance by running out lines or otherwise; for having once entered the young ice, they can only be propelled slowly through it by digging the oars and boat-hooks into it, at the same time breaking it across the bows, and by rolling the boat from side to side. After continuing this laborious work for some time with little good effect, and considerable damage to the planks and oars, a boat is often obliged to return the same way that she came, backing out in the canal thus formed to no purpose. A ship in this helpless state, her sails in vain expanded to a favourable breeze, her ordinary resources failing, and suddenly arrested in her course upon the element through which she has been accustomed to move without restraint, has often reminded me of Gulliver tied down by the feeble hands of Lilliputians; nor are the struggles she makes to effect a release, and the apparent insignificance of the means by which her efforts are opposed the least just or the least vexatious part of the resemblance.” [Illustration: AN ESQUIMAUX SNOW VILLAGE.]