350 CAPTAIN COOK'S VOYAGES 



certainly more like a cow than a horse ; but this likeness 

 consists in nothing but the snout. In short, it is an animal 

 like a seal, but incomparably larger, weighing sometimes 

 more than one thousand pounds, and measuring ten feet 

 from the snout to the tail. 



" By the time that we had got our sea-horses on board, 

 we were in a manner surrounded with the ice, and had 

 no way left to clear it but by standing to the southward, 

 which was done till three o'clock next morning. At two 

 in the afternoon we fell in with the main ice, along the 

 edge of which we kept, being partly directed by the roaring 

 of the sea-horses, for we had a very thick fog. Thus 

 we continued sailing till near midnight, when we got in 

 amongst the loose ice, and heard the surge of the sea 

 upon the main ice. 



" Next morning the fog clearing away, we saw the con- 

 tinent of America, extending from south by east to east 

 by south ; and at noon from south-west half south to east ; 

 the nearest part five leagues distant. 



" I continued to steer in for it until eight o'clock, in 

 order to get a nearer view of it and to look for a har- 

 bour, but seeing nothing like one I stood again to the north. 



" The ice obliged us to change our course frequently 

 till the 27th, when we tacked and stood to the west, and 

 at seven in the evening we were close in with the edge of 

 the ice, which lay east from north-east, and west south-west, 

 as far each way as the eye could reach. Having but little 

 wind I went with the boats to examine the state of the ice. 

 I found it consisting of loose pieces of various extent, and 

 so close together that I could hardly enter the outer edge 

 with a boat ; and it was as impossible for the ships to enter 

 it, as if it had been so many rocks. 



" A thick fog which came on while I was thus employed 

 with the boats, hastened me aboard rather sooner than I 

 could have wished, with one sea-horse to each ship. We 

 had killed more, but could not wait to bring them with us. 

 The number of these animals, on all the ice that we had 

 seen, is almost incredible.* By this time our people began 

 to relish them. We now stretched to the south-east. 



" On the 29th, the weather, which had been hazy, cleared 

 up. This enabled us to have a pretty good view of the 



* Captain Sir Robert M'Clure in the Investigator fell in with 

 immense herds of walruass in the same locality. " A gun was at 

 first loaded with grape and canister for the purpose, of shooting som 

 of them ; but the order was countermanded by Captain M'Clure, 

 from the kindly feelings awakened by the affection evinced between 

 the mother and babes of this brute community." Vide Captain 

 Sherard Osborn's Narrative. 



