330 



RETURN HOME. 



Sound, which opens off the north side of the upper part 

 of Baffin's Bay. He accordingly went round to that 

 place with his two steamers, and explored it. He found 

 it about sixty miles wide at the entrance, a width 

 which greatly exceeds that given it in the Admiralty 

 charts ; and he sailed about forty-five miles up its 

 southern shore, and was there arrested by a fixed bar- 

 rier of ice ; and he then sailed along the face of that 

 barrier, twenty-five miles, to the northern shore, and 

 traced that shore down to the entrance. But he saw 

 nothing to indicate that the Erebus and the Terror had 

 been there ; and he judged, from well-defined appear- 

 ances to the west, that the sound is closed by land not 

 very far above the point which he reached, and has no 

 communication with the Polar Sea. He then thought 

 all further attempts at exploration either useless or 

 inconsistent with his instructions, and set sail for Eng- 

 land, where he arrived in the autumn of 1851. 



