Nothing could
exceed the alacrity with which this laborious work was undertaken,
and continued daily from six in the morning till eight at night,
with the intermission only of mealtimes: nor could anything be
more lively and interesting than the scene which now presented
itself to an observer on the southeast point. The day was
beautifully clear, the sea open as far as the eye could stretch to
the northward, and the "busy hum" of our people's voices could at
times be heard mingling with the cheerful though fantastic songs
with which the Greenland sailors are accustomed at once to beguile
their labour, and to keep the necessary time in the action of
sawing the ice. The whole prospect, together with the hopes and
associations excited by it, was, to persons cooped up as we had
been, exhilarating beyond conception.
In the course of the first week we had completed the two side
cuts, and also two shorter ones in the space between the ships;
making in all a length of two thousand three hundred feet on each
side of the intended canal, the thickness of the ice being in
general four feet, but in one or two places (where the junction of
the sea-ice with the bay-floe occasioned some squeezing) above ten
feet and a half, scarcely allowing our longest saws to work.
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