As we steamed on, the ice became thicker, and we had to turn south to get out of the way of it, worming our course among the loose floes.

The _Roosevelt_ avoided the heavier ice; but the lighter pack she shoved aside without much difficulty.

South of Brevoort Island we were fortunate in finding a strip of open water, and steamed northward again, keeping close to the shore.
It must be remembered that from Etah to Cape Sheridan, for the greater part of the course, the shores on either side are clearly visible,--on the east the Greenland coast, on the west the coast of Ellesmere Land and Grant Land.

At Cape Beechey, the narrowest and most dangerous part, the channel is only eleven miles wide, and when the air is clear it almost seems as if a rifle bullet might be fired from one side to the other.

These waters, save in exceptional seasons, are filled with the heaviest kind of ice, which is constantly floating southward from the Polar Sea toward Baffin Bay.
Whether this channel was carved in the solid land by the force of pre-Adamite glaciers, or whether it is a Titanic cleft formed by the breaking off of Greenland from Grant Land, is a question still undetermined by geologists; but for difficulty and danger there is no place to compare with it in the whole arctic region.
It is hard for a layman to understand the character of the ice through which the _Roosevelt_ fought her way.