Chap. IV. PARRY'S FIRST VOYAGE. 81 



eighty miles ; but the navigation among fields and 

 floes of this kind is more tedious than dangerous. 

 Having got into the open stream, the water here 

 was found to have deepened so much that no bot- 

 tom was obtained with three hundred and ten 

 fathoms of line ; no ice in any direction, and the 

 temperature of the water had risen from 31° to 37°. 

 Whales, too, were abundant ; no less than eighty- 

 two large ones being counted in the course of the 

 day. 



Parry observes, that " if any proof were wanting 

 of the value of local knowledge in the navigation of 

 the Polar Seas, it would be amply furnished by the 

 fact of our having now reached the entrance of Sir 

 James Lancaster's Sound just one month earlier 

 than we had done in 1818, although we had then 

 sailed above a fortnight sooner, with the same 

 general object in view, namely, to penetrate to the 

 western coast of Baffin's Bay, where alone the north- 

 west passage was now supposed to be sought for 

 and found." He omits, however, one important 

 cause of his early approach to Lancaster Sound,— 

 that of taking the shortest route, instead of circum- 

 navigating Baffin's Bay. On the 31st a party 

 landed at the spot they had visited the preceding- 

 year, when Lancaster Sound was abandoned. The 

 flag-staff was still standing ; the ground free from 

 ice or snow ; the marks of their shoes as fresh as if 

 imprinted but a few days before — a circumstance 



G 



