ourselves.” They utilised its blubber for fuel, after the Esquimaux manner. Some few birds—rotges, dovekies, looms, mollemucks, and ivory and Ross gulls—were very occasionally seen and shot; and one day _a couple of small flies_ were found upon the ice, which to them was an event of ridiculous importance, and as so is recorded in the narrative. This at least gives an insight into the terrible monotony of their existence at this period. Hitherto they had been favoured by the wind, but on the 19th a northerly breeze set in, which, while it was the means of opening several lanes of water, counterbalanced this advantage by drifting the ice—and, by consequence, the party on it—in a southerly direction. Great was their mortification at noon on the 20th to find by observation that since the same hour on the 17th they had only advanced five miles in a northerly direction. Although they had apparently made good progress in the intervening time, their efforts had been nullified by the ice drifting southward. These facts were carefully concealed from the men. On the 21st the floe broke under the weight of the boats and sledges; some of the men went completely through, and one of them was only held up by his drag-belt being attached to a sledge which happened to be on firmer ice. This day they made nearly seven miles by travelling, and drifted back four and a half; or, in other words, their observation of the latitude showed them to have, in reality, advanced only two miles and a quarter. Under these circumstances we can understand their anxiety when, after a calm of short duration, fog-banks were observed rising both to the southward and north. Which would prevail? That from the south came first, with a light air from that quarter, but soon after the weather became perfectly calm and clear. Next night they made the best travelling during the expedition. The floes were large and tolerably level, and some good lanes of water occurring, they believed that they must have _advanced_ ten or eleven miles in a NNE. direction, having traversed a distance of about seventeen. They had done so—_on the ice_; but the ice itself had drifted so much to the southward that they found, to their great disappointment and disgust, by observation of the latitude, that they had only made _four_ miles. Still worse was it on the 26th, when they found themselves in latitude 82° 40’ 23"; since their last observation on the 22nd they had, though travelling almost incessantly, _lost_ by drift no less than thirteen miles and a half, and were more than three miles to the southward of their earlier position. The men unsuspiciously remarked that they “were a long time getting to this 83°!” ignorant of the fact that the current was now taking them faster south than all their labours advanced them north. Unlike Sisyphus, they were but exerting an honourable ambition, but like him they were rolling a stone up-hill which constantly rolled back again. The eighty-third