HUDSON'S BAY. 1 15 



ing. There can be no doubt that the land 1824. 

 now seen was an island, which I named after Sept. 

 Mr. Tom, in whose watch it was first dis- 

 covered, and that as our track from Cape 

 Southampton to the Bay of God's Mercy on 

 the 31st August, lay thirty miles to the east- 

 ward, we must have been actually passing 

 within it at the time when our soundings de- 

 creased to nineteen fathoms, and it was most 

 fortunate that on then shoaling the water we 

 had not kept away to the westward, which 

 must in that case have ran us directly upon it. 

 During the forenoon we passed a great 

 quantity of tangle-weed, and some which was 

 picked up had quantities of small bivalve 

 shells attached to the blades and leaves. The 

 stalk of one piece which we measured, was 

 eighteen feet in length, and the leaf, although 

 a portion had been torn from its point, twelve 

 feet six inches, making a total of thirty feet six 

 inches. It would appear that at this time the 

 stream was setting to the westward, as all the 

 blades were floating in that direction. Re- 

 peated observations had now enabled us to judge 

 with tolerable precision, of the set of the tides, 

 by the way in which the tangle- weed floated 

 in the water; the broad flat blade acting on the 



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