Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze the edge of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a constant day must accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is melted.

Then the ice cracks, like cannons over-charged, and moves with a loud grinding noise.
But not yet is escape to be made with safety.

After a detention of ten months, Parry got free; but, in escaping, narrowly missed the destruction of both ships, by their being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the unyielding shore.

What animals are found on Melville Island we may judge from the results of sport during ten months' detention.

The island exceeds five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen, twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds--not quite two ounces of meat per day to every man.