Novel and striking as were the colours thrown athwart the cold, hard sky by the setting orb, I thought with a sigh of those gay and flickering shades which beautify the heavens in the tropics, when the fierce sun sinks to his western rest. No gleams of purple and gold lit up the hill-tops; no fiery streaks of sunlight streamed across the water, or glittered on the wave. No! all was cold and silent as the grave. In heaven alone there appeared sunshine and vitality:--it was rightly so. Frost was fast claiming its dominion, for, with declining sunlight, the space of water between the pack and the floe became a sheet of young ice, about the one-eighth of an inch in thickness.
[Headnote: _CROSSING WELLINGTON CHANNEL._]
The "Assistance" and "Intrepid" were gone, it was very evident; but the American squadron was observed in Barlow Inlet. As we approached them, at two o'clock in the morning, they were to be seen firing muskets. We therefore put our helms down, and performed, by the help of the screw, figures of eight in the young ice, until a boat had communicated with Commander De Haven, from whom we learned that one of his vessels was aground in the inlet, and that it was no place for us to go into, unless we wanted to remain there. The passage to the westward, round Cape Hotham, was likewise blocked up, and no alternative remained but to make fast to the floe to the north of us. This was done, and just in time; for a smart breeze from the S.E. brought up a great deal of ice, and progress in any direction was impossible.
I had now time to observe that the floe of Wellington Channel, instead of consisting of a mass of ice (as was currently reported) about eight feet in thickness, did not in average depth exceed that of the floes of Melville Bay, although a great deal of old ice was mixed up with it, as if a pack had been re-cemented by a winter's frost; in which case, of course, there would be ice of various ages mixed up in the body; and much of the ice was lying crosswise and edgeways, so that a person desirous of looking at the Wellington Channel floe, as the accumulation of many years of continued frost, might have some grounds upon which to base his supposition. A year's observation, however, has shown me the fallacy of supposing that in deep-water channels floes continue to increase in thickness from year to year; and to that subject I will return in a future chapter, when treating of Wellington Channel.