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Updated: June 4, 2025
A seemingly good point for crossing the Canadian was found a couple of miles down the stream, where we hoped to get our train over on the ice, but an experiment proving that it was not strong enough, a ford had to be made, which was done by marching some of the cavalry through the river, which was about half a mile wide, to break up the large floes when they had been cut loose with axes.
We first got amongst the very thick floes at 1 A.M., and jammed through some of the most monstrous I have ever seen. The pressure ridges rose 24 feet above the surface the ice must have extended at least 30 feet below. The blows given us gave the impression of irresistible solidity.
"Slush" or "Sludge". The initial stages in the freezing of sea-water, when its consistency becomes gluey or soupy. "Pancake-ice". Small circular floes with raised rims; due to the break- up in a gently ruffled sea of the newly formed ice into pieces which strike against each other, and so form turned-up edges. "Young Ice". Applied to all unhummocked ice up to about a foot in thickness.
When Menie saw his father coming with the kyak, he wasn't afraid any more, for he was sure his father would save him. He wasn't even afraid about the cakes of ice that were floating in the water, though there is nothing more dangerous than to go out in a kyak among ice floes.
The sea is blue before us, dotted with shining bergs or ice floes, whilst far over the Sound, yet so bold and magnificent as to appear near, stand the beautiful Western Mountains with their numerous lofty peaks, their deep glacial valley and clear cut scarps, a vision of mountain scenery that can have few rivals.
Under ordinary conditions the safe course would have been to go about and stand to the east. But in our case we must risk trouble to get smoother water for the ponies. We passed a stream of ice over which the sea was breaking heavily and one realised the danger of being amongst loose floes in such a sea.
They looked small and feeble on the vast white slope, and a few plumes of smoke seemed to curl futilely out of the hollow. Frost and snow defied man's engine power, and the rattle of the machines was lost in the din the river made. Its channel was full of snow that had frozen in the honey-combed masses, and the ragged floes broke with a harsh, ringing crash.
There was just a chance of getting through, but we have stuck half-way, advance and retreat equally impossible under sail alone. Steam has been ordered but will not be ready till near midnight. Shall we be out of the pack by Christmas Eve? The floes to-day have been larger but thin and very sodden.
I decided to issue a complete new set of Burberrys and underclothing to each man, and also a supply of new socks. The camp was transferred to the larger floe quickly, and I began there to direct the preparations for the long journey across the floes to Paulet Island or Snow Hill. Hurley meanwhile had rigged his kinematograph-camera and was getting pictures of the 'Endurance' in her death-throes.
As the ship, in the solid floe, set to the north-west, the cables rattled and tore at the hawse-pipes; luckily the anchors, lying as they were on a strip-sloping bottom, came away easily, without damage to windlass or hawse-pipes. Slowly as we disappeared into Sound, the light in the hut died away. At 11.30 p.m. the ice around us started to break up, the floes playing tattoo on the ship's sides.
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