56 A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY 
is also much thinner than it was a few days ago ; Some 
of it indeed that we passed to-day was so honey- 
combed, or as it is commonly called, so rotten, that 
parts of it would not bear even a man’s weight. I 
think this rapid dissolution may in some measure 
be attributed to the greater depth of the water here 
than to the eastward ; for it is well known that shoal 
water freezes more readily than deep water, conse- 
quently when ice happens to drift into deep, it will 
be destroyed quicker than in shoal water. 
Thursday, 29th. — We got yesterday evening into 
a clear sea, and there is to-day every appearance of 
its continuing so; the sky looks watery to the west- 
ward, and we have had all the forenoon a considerable 
swell from that direction, so that we may, I think, 
with safety presume, that the sea is open at least as 
far as Lancaster’s Sound, and as we know that 
there is a greater depth of water in that inlet than 
where we now are, it is not likely that we shall find 
much obstruction from ice there. ; 
We were at noon only one hundred and sixty 
miles from the entrance of it, having, in the course 
of the last twenty-four hours, ran upwards of one 
hundred miles; a distance, certainly, that in tem- 
perate climates would be performed by a ship under 
the most ordinary circumstances ; but in these re- 
gions, and after such tardy movements as we have 
for some time past been accustomed to, appears to 
us a great run, and, taking every thing into consi- 
deration, is so in reality. 
We saw several whales to-day for the first time 
since we entered Baftin’s Bay, or at least since we 
passed the latitude of 70° N., for I believe the line of 
division between it and Davis’s Straits is not yet well 
