Our travelling to-night was the very best we had during this excursion; for though we had to launch and haul up the boats frequently, an operation which, under the most favourable circumstances, necessarily occupies much time, yet the floes being large and tolerably level, and some good lanes of water occurring, we made, according to the most moderate calculation, between ten and eleven miles in a N.N.E. direction, and traversed a distance of about seventeen. We halted at a quarter past eight A.M. after more than twelve hours' actual travelling, by which the people were extremely fatigued; but, while our work seemed to be repaid by anything like progress, the men laboured with great cheerfulness to the utmost of their strength. The ice over which we had travelled was by far the largest and heaviest we met with during our whole journey; this, indeed, was the only occasion on which we saw anything answering in the slightest degree to the descriptions given of the main ice. The largest floe was from two and a half to three miles square, and in some places the thickness of the ice was from 15 to 20 feet. However, it was a satisfaction to observe that the ice had certainly improved; and we now ventured to hope that, for the short time that we could still pursue our outward journey, our progress would be more commensurate with our exertions than it had hitherto proved. In proportion, then, to the hopes we had begun to entertain, was our disappointment in finding, at noon, that we were in latitude 82° 43' 5", or not quite four miles to the northward of yesterday's observation, instead of the ten or eleven which we had travelled! We halted at seven A.M. on the 23d, after a laborious day's work, and, I must confess, a disheartening one to those who knew to how little effect we were struggling; which, however, the men did not, though they often laughingly remarked that "we were a long time getting to this 83°!" Being anxious to make up, in some measure, for the drift which the present northerly wind was in all probability occasioning, we rose earlier than usual, and set off at half past four in the evening. At half past five P.M. we saw a very beautiful natural phenomenon. A broad white fog-bow first appeared opposite the sun, as was very commonly the case; presently it became strongly tinged with, the prismatic colours, and soon afterward no less than five other complete arches were formed within the main bow, the interior ones being gradually narrower than those without, but the whole of them beautifully coloured. The larger bow, and the one next within it, had the red on the outer or upper part of the circle, the others on the inner side.