3rd of February Sunday 1805.[17]
a fine day; the blacksmith again commences his opperations.
we were visited by but few of the
natives today. the
situation of our boat and perogues is now allarming,
they are
firmly inclosed in the Ice and almost covered with snow—
the
ice which incloses them lyes in several stratas of unequal thicknesses
which are seperated by streams of
water. this [is]
peculiarly unfortunate because so soon as we cut through
the
first strata of ice the water rushes up and rises as high as the
upper surface of the ice and thus creates such a debth of water
as
renders it impracticable to cut away the lower strata which
appears firmly
attatched to, and confining the bottom of the
vessels. the instruments we
have hitherto used has been the
ax only, with which, we have made several
attempts that
proved unsuccessfull from the cause above mentioned. we
then determined to attempt freeing them from the ice by
means of
boiling water which we purposed heating in the
vessels by means of hot
stones, but this expedient proved also
fruitless, as every species of
stone which we could procure in
the neighbourhood partook so much of the
calcarious genus
that they burst into small particles on being exposed to
the
heat of the fire. we now determined as the dernier resort to
prepare a parsel of Iron spikes and attatch them to the end of
small
poles of convenient length and endeavour by means
of them to free the
vessels from the ice. we have already
prepared a large rope of Elk-skin
and a windless by means of
which we have no doubt of being able to draw
the boat on the
bank provided we can free [it] from the ice.
