9. On the 10th of July the ship under full sail forced her way through the floes, which were still somewhat close, and reached open water. The masses of ice through which we pressed were of considerable size. We now continued our course, which had been interrupted in the manner described, along the ice-barrier in a north-easterly direction. After leaving the Norwegian coast, the depth of the sea decreased considerably. We were now on the bank of Bear Island, and we found bottom at 90 metres (49·213 fathoms). Our course was impeded by calms, currents and winds from the east, and even in the middle of July by severe storms. We were sometimes in drift-ice and sometimes outside of it. We soon discovered that the ice of these seas was not to be compared with the vast masses of the Greenland seas. The floes we saw were not more than one year old. As we sailed eastward, the icebergs were neither so numerous nor so large, and disappeared almost entirely at 40° E. Long., which we reached on the 21st of July, after we had followed the ice-barriers from 74° to 75° 30′ N. Lat. Here we penetrated within them. Though drift-ice lay on every side, a steamer would have found nothing to arrest her progress. But the prevalence sometimes of east winds, sometimes of calms, the constant occurrence of fogs, the defects of our vessel, the little authority we had over the crew when extraordinary labour was demanded, the great extent of the region to be explored,—all these difficulties prevented our pressing on in this direction. We therefore turned, July 22, in a westerly direction, in order to explore another opening in the ice, into which we advanced for about fifteen miles, and found floes not more than a year old lying so loosely together, that our ship under full sail seemed to pass over them, much in the same fashion as a sledge glides over a snow-covered plain. But again our course had to be altered, and Weyprecht steered the vessel in a south-westerly direction to the ice-barrier. In 76° 30′ N. Lat. and 29° E. Long. we came on high and close masses of ice, and escaped with much difficulty (July 29) the danger of being again “beset.”