32 CAPTAIN m'cLURE's DESPATCHES. 



settled in the water ; the only damage sustained was several sheets of cop- 

 per ripped off and rolled up like a sheet of paper, but not a fastening 

 had given way, nor does any leakage indicate the slightest defect. By 

 midnight the ice was stationary and everything quiet, which continued 

 until the 10th of September; indeed, from the temperature having 

 fallen to IG degrees, with all the appearance of the setting in of the 

 winter, I considered our further progress stopped until next year. The 

 crew were employed collecting ballast (of which they obtained 55 tons), 

 and other arrangements making for such an event. Shooting and other 

 ])arties made daily excursions inland ; in which rambles an exceedingly 

 old Esquimaux encampment was met with, and a most interesting dis- 

 covery of a range of liills, composed of one entire mass of wood in 

 every stage, from a petrifaction to a log fit for firewood. Many large 

 trees were among it, but, in endeavouring to exhume them, they were 

 found to be too much decayed to stand removal ; the largest piece that 

 w^e have been able to bring away being 3 feet 10 inches in girth, and 

 seven in length. These were found by Messrs. Sainsbury and Piers, at 

 an elevation of 300 feet above the beach (in lat 74° 27' N., long. 122° 

 32' 15" W.), which is strewed with chips and small bits of wood, as 

 are the watercourses and ravines as far as any person has walked inland, 

 evidently washed down by the thaw from these ligneous hills. The 

 country has fine valleys, well covered with verdure, and at some period 

 of the year must be frequented by large herds of animals, as the heads 

 of musk oxen and the well-picked carcasses of deer are everywhere met 

 with, many quite fresh. Two large wolves were disturbed in the act of 

 finishing a fawn which they had just killed, but only two musk oxen 

 were seen, besides a few hares and ptarmigan shot by our parties. To- 

 day the temperature, from a change of wind to the southward, rose to 

 39 degrees, accompanied by rain, which had the effect of so loosening 

 the ice that the main pack separated from the shoie, about half a-niile 

 from the ship, openhig a lane of water about 16 miles to the eastward, 

 varying in breadth from 50 to 200 yards, which, however, did not pro- 

 mise any release to the vessel, until 11-50 p.m. (while the ofticer of the 

 watch and quarter-master were examining the tide pole fixed on the 

 beech, through a hole cut in the ice, about 40 yards from the shore, it 

 puzzled them both to find that they could not keep the gauge erect, as 

 it slipped from their hands while endeavouring to do so) when it noise- 

 lessly opened, and we drifted towards the pack, which it was impossible 

 to avoid, and w^re carried to the N.E. a knot per hour, at the distance 

 of iialf-a-mile from the shore, in soundings from 107 to 134 fathoms; 

 all methods by warps and saws to extricate the vessel from her perilous 

 ])osition proving abortive, having masses of ice firmly frozen to her 

 bottom. Recourse was had to gunpowder, which fortunately effected 

 lier release by the exj)enditure of 150 lbs. in charges of from 3 lbs. to 

 2G lbs , according to the distance from the vessel, which by any other 

 means could not have been achieved. This saved us from being set 

 against the thick grounded ice whiuh was resting upon Point Colquhoun 

 — certain destruction — into which we should have been hurried by five 

 minutes' longer detention, having barely time to make sail and shoot 

 the vessel, without rudder, clear of the piece we had been so long 

 frozen to into the water, cutting the hawsere, which canted us, just as 

 it entered the solid mass, n})on the weather edge of which we twice 

 grazed as we worked into the land; when, at 7 p.m. of the llth, we 



