On the 1st of October some small rain fell, which, immediately freezing, made the decks and ropes as smooth and slippery as if coated with glass; the thermometer had for several days past permanently fallen below the freezing point, and sometimes as low as 20° at night; which change, together with the altered appearance of the land, and the rapid formation of young ice near the shores, gave pretty evident notice of the approach of winter. The commencement of this dreary season in these regions may, indeed, be fairly dated from the time when the earth no longer receives and radiates heat enough to melt the snow which falls upon it. When the land is once covered with this substance, so little calculated to favour the absorption of heat, the frigorific process seems to be carried on with increased vigour, defining very clearly the change from summer to winter, with little or no immediate interval to which the name of autumn can be distinctly assigned. We passed Cape Edwards on the 6th; but on the 8th the formation of young ice upon the surface of the water began most decidedly to put a stop to the navigation of these seas, and warned us that the season of active operations was nearly at an end. When to the ordinary difficulties which the navigation of the Polar Seas presents were superadded the disadvantages of a temperature at or near _zero_, its necessary concomitant the young ice, and twelve hours of darkness daily, it was impossible any longer to entertain a doubt of the expediency of immediately placing the ships in the best security that could be found for them during the winter, rather than run the risk of being permanently detached from the land by an endeavour to regain the continent. We were in hopes of receiving effectual shelter from the numerous grounded masses, but could only find berths within one of them in five to six fathoms water. We now, for the first time, _walked_ on board the ships; and, before night, had them moved into their places, by sawing a canal for two or three hundred yards through the ice. The average thickness of the new floe was already three inches and a quarter; but being in some places much less, several officers and men fell in, and, from the difficulty of getting a firm place to rest on, narrowly escaped a more serious inconvenience than a thorough wetting. The whole sheet of ice, even in those parts which easily bore a man's weight, had a waving motion under the feet, like that of leather or any other tough flexible substance set afloat, a property which is, I believe, peculiar to salt-water ice.