360 SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



'822. to tiiis subject I may at once add, that two or three months after this, 

 on laying before Ewerat our own chart of the whole coast, in order to 



obtain the Esquimaux names, we discovered that the island just mentioned 

 was called Khemig, by which name Ormond Island was also distinguished ; the 

 word expressing in the Esquimaux language any thing stopping up the 

 mouth of a place or narrowing its entrance, and applied also more familiarly 

 to the cork of a bottle or a plug of any kind. And thus were reconciled all 

 the apparent inconsistencies respecting this hitherto mysterious and incom- 

 prehensible word, which had occasioned us so much perplexity. 



After landing to dine upon one of the islands of which, from first to last, 

 we counted nearly one hundred, we again made sail and, running between 

 the bluffs, which are half a mile apart, continued our course in rather a 

 wider channel than before though still among islands. At half-past three 

 we were stopped by a floe of fixed ice stretching entirely across the 

 passage, and the weather now becoming thick wrth small snow, we landed and 

 pitched the tent for the night ; not, however, till I had recognised on the left 

 hand or main-land the remarkable cliff described in my former journey, 

 by which circumstance we were assured of being near the little inlet then 

 discovered. 

 Frid. 27. At daylight on the 27th, we crossed to a small island at the margin of the 

 ice ; and leaving the boat there in charge of the coxswain and two of the 

 crew, Mr. Ross and myself, accompanied by the other two, set out across the 

 ice at seven A.M. to gain the main-land, with the intention of determining 

 the extent of the inlet by walking up its southern bank. After an hour's 

 good travelling we landed at eight A.M., and had scarcely done so when we 

 found ourselves at the very entrance, being exactly opposite the place from 

 which Mr. Richards and myself had obtained the first view of the inlet. 

 The patch of ice on which we had been walking, and which was about three 

 miles long, proved the only remains of last year's formation; so forcibly had 

 nature struggled to get rid of this before the commencement of a fresh 

 winter. 



We found this land similar to Igloolik in its geological character, being 

 composed of limestone in schistose fragments ; but in some parts, even for a 

 mile or two together, covered with herbage the most extensive and luxuriant 

 1 have ever seen near this latitude. Here and there occurred a little pile as 

 it were of the fragments of limestone, lying horizontally as if arranged by 

 art, and projecting a fcAv feet above the surface of the ground. The sides of 



