The 1st of August had now arrived; and yet, incredible as it may appear, the ships were as securely confined in the ice as in the middle of winter, except that a pool of water, about twice their own length in diameter, was now opened around them. I determined, therefore, notwithstanding the apparent hopelessness of sawing our way through four or five miles of ice, to begin that laborious process; not, indeed, with the hope of cutting a canal sufficiently large to allow the passage of the ships to sea, but with a view to weaken it so much as in some measure to assist its disruption whenever any swell should set in upon its margin. On this and the following day, therefore, all the gear was carried down for that purpose, and a large tent pitched for the ships' companies to dine in, the distance being too great to allow them to return on board to their meals. On the 3d, however, we were saved a great deal of unnecessary labour, by the ice opening out at the crack before mentioned, so that our sawing might now be commenced within a mile of the Fury. After divine service, therefore, all hands were sent from both ships to bring back the tent and tools to the point of Oongalooyat, and the parties were recalled from the walrus-fishery, except a single boat's crew: these also returned on board a few days after, the whole number of seahorses killed being eight, and one large seal. On the 4th our sawing work was commenced, with the usual alacrity on the part of the officers and men, and three hundred and fifty yards of ice were got out before night, its thickness varying from one to four feet, but very irregular on account of the numerous pools and holes. An equal length was accomplished on the following day, though not without excessive fatigue and constant wet to the men, several of whom fell into the water by the ice breaking under them. On the 5th, the register-thermometer, which had been placed in the ground in the winter, was taken up, though, to our astonishment, the ground above and about it had become nearly as hard and compactly frozen as when we dug the hole to put it down. How this came about we were quite at a loss to determine; for the earth had been thrown in quite loosely, whereas its present consolidated state implied its having been thoroughly thawed and frozen again. It occupied two men ten days to extricate it, which, as they approached the thermometer, was done by a chisel and mallet, to avoid injury by jarring. This, however, was not sufficient to prevent mischief, the instrument being so identified with the frozen earth as to render it impossible to strike the ground near it without communicating the shock to the tubes, two of which were in consequence found to be broken. Thus ended our experiment for ascertaining the temperature of the earth during the winter; an experiment which it would seem, from this attempt, scarcely practicable to make in any satisfactory manner without some apparatus constructed expressly for the purpose.