26 A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY 
Thursday, 17th. — We found to-day that-there is a 
considerable current settling to the southward here, 
for the latitude observed *, and that by account 
differed, since yesterday, eight miles, which will of 
course be the daily rate of the current. 
Friday, 18th.— We made the. ice, for the first 
time, at an early hour this morning; it was in the 
form which is called ‘* loose streams,’’ that is, a 
collection of broken pieces of ice so detached from 
each other that a ship may sail through them. In 
the course of the day, several icebergs were seen, 
some of them of a size sufficiently large to attract the 
attention of those who had never witnessed any thing 
of the kind before; but as most of us had seen last 
year those stupendous masses that were met with in 
Baffin’s Bay, and the upper part of the Straits, those 
seen to-day were not calculated to attract much 
notice. I understand that the fishermen consider it 
as a sign of a good season to meet the ice in the 
early part of the year well to the southward, for in 
that case they reckon that it must have broken up to 
the northward early in the spring. I do not perceive 
however that any inference can be drawn from our 
having met with it in so low a latitudet, as the 
season is now so far advanced, that it has had suf- 
ficient time to drift this far without any necessity for 
an early breaking up: for my own part, indeed, I 
think that the “ Fiords,”’ or inlets about Cape Deso- 
lation and its neighbourhood, are quite sufficient to 
produce all the ice that is.usually met with otf Cape 
* The latitude by meridian altitude to day was 58° 29! 56” N. 
and by account 58° 58’ 55” N., and that observed yesterday was 
58° 12’ 43” N. and by the dead reckoning 58° 33! 56” N. 
+ Our latitude to day at noon was 59° 38’ 41” N. 
15 
