TO THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 15 
of the afternoon, when at least forty miles from this 
rock, we found soundings in one hundred and fifty 
fathoms water; so that it may be regarded as the 
summit of a very extensive submarine mountain, 
whose sides, at least the western one, declined very 
gradually. 
Thursday, 27th. — Nothing has occurred for these 
two days past worthy of remark, the weather has 
been, generally speaking, very fine ; the temperature 
of the air being most commonly at 50°, and of the 
sea at the surface about a degree less. This after- 
noon the weather being almost perfectly calm, we 
availed ourselves of the opportunity of trying for 
soundings, on the supposed sunken land of Buss, 
according to its situation by Lieutenant Pickersgill, 
who, on his passage to Davis’s Straits in the year 
1776, struck soundings with a line of three hundred 
and twenty fathoms in the very place * where we 
happened to get becalmed this afternoon; but, strange 
to say, although we had one thousand one hundred 
and twenty fathoms of line out, we found no bottom. 
It ought not to be inferred from this, however, that 
the bank on which that officer sounded does not 
exist, for it is more reasonable to suppose that he 
might be mistaken in his longitude of the place, than 
that the existence of the bank itself should be ques- 
tioned, more especially as some of our latest charts 
(by Stee/) lays the sunken land of Buss down several 
degrees to che westward of where we sounded to- 
day. I shall therefore forbear saying any thing more 
concerning this lost land at present, as we shall most 
* The latitude and longitude of the place where Pickersgill 
struck soundings are 57° N. and 24° 24! W. which agrees with our 
situation this afternoon at the time we sounded 
