Even by the utmost efforts they could not make an advance of more than a mile and a half or two miles in five or six hours. Realizing the unfavourable conditions for reaching the pole, owing to the advanced season of the year, Parry soon relinquished that hope and bent his energies to reaching at best the 83° parallel, if possible. But now to his utter discouragement it was found that the drifting of the snow fields was gradually carrying them backward, and that, in spite of every attempt to advance, they were daily losing ground.
On July 23, they reached their farthest north, 82° 45´. “At the extreme point of our journey,” says Parry, “our distance from the _Hecla_ was only one hundred and seventy-two miles in a S. W. direction. To accomplish this distance, we had traversed, by our reckoning, two hundred and ninety-two miles, of which about one hundred were performed by water previously to our entering the ice. As we travelled by far the greater part of our distance on the ice three, and not unfrequently five, times over, we may safely multiply the length of the road by two and a half; so that our whole distance, on a very moderate calculation, amounted to five hundred and eighty geographical, or six hundred and sixty-eight statute miles, being nearly sufficient to have reached the pole in a direct line. Up to this period, we had been particularly fortunate in the preservation of our health.”
Owing to the increased softness of the ice, the return trip was even more difficult than the advance, the men sinking to their thighs in the ice slush. By the 11th of August the joyful sound of the surf breaking against the margin of the ice was heard, and later the boats were launched into open water, and in another ten days they rejoined the _Hecla_, and soon afterward sailed for England.
Parry’s remarkable voyages, besides reaping a rich harvest of scientific data, had proved the navigability of Lancaster Sound, the non-existence of the Crocker Mountains, and that Prince Regent Inlet opened into Barrow Strait, which in turn widened into Melville Sound, and thence opened into the polar ocean. He had added to the map the important archipelago or Parry Islands, many of which he named and explored; had outlined the sounds, bays, and inlets through which he had sailed; discovered Hecla and Fury Strait; and demonstrated the impracticability of making the northwest passage by way of Frozen Strait.