The _Fox_ left England on the last day of June, 1857, and after visiting some of the Greenland settlements, turned seawards. Seventy miles to the west of Upernavik the edge of the “middle ice” was reached, and the vessel caught in its margin of loose ice. They soon steamed out of what might have been to a sailing vessel a serious predicament, and closely examined the field for forty miles without finding an opening. M’Clintock, being satisfied that he could not force a passage through it across Baffin’s Bay, steered to the northward, and on August 12th was in Melville Bay, where the vessel was made fast to an iceberg which was _grounded_ in fifty-eight fathoms (348 feet) of water. Here they were again beset by the ice. Alas! this was but the commencement of their troubles. For 242 days—or, in other words, for eight months after this—the little _Fox_ was helplessly and, as it often appeared, hopelessly, drifting with the ice packed and piled around her, with but a feeble chance of escape, and with a very strong probability of being crushed to nothing without a moment’s warning. Some extracts from M’Clintock’s journal will be found interesting at this juncture. “20th. No favourable ice-drift; this detention has become most painful. The _Enterprise_ reached the open water upon this day in 1848, within fifty miles of our present position. Unfortunately, our prospects are not so cheering. There is no relative motion in the floes of ice, except a gradual closing together, the small spaces and streaks of water being still further diminished. The temperature has fallen, and is usually below the freezing point. I feel most keenly the difficulty of my position. We cannot afford to lose many more days. “The men enjoy a game of rounders on the ice each evening. Petersen and Christian are constantly on the look-out for seals, as well as Hobson and Young occasionally. If in good condition and killed instantaneously the seals float. Several have already been shot. The liver fried with bacon is excellent. “Birds have become scarce. The few we see are returning southward. How anxiously I watch the ice, weather, barometer, and thermometer! Wind from any other quarter than south-east would oblige the floe-pieces to re-arrange themselves, in doing which they would become loose, and then would be our opportunity to proceed. “24th. Fine weather, with very light northerly winds. We have drifted seven miles to the west in the last two days. The ice is now a close pack, so close that one may walk for many miles over it in any direction by merely turning a little to the right or left to avoid the small water spaces. My frequent visits to the crow’s-nest are not inspiriting. How absolutely distressing this imprisonment is to me no one without similar experience can form any idea. As yet the crew have but little suspicion how blighted our prospects are.