372 SIMPSON'S EXPLORATIONS— 18SQ-B9. 



menced the eastward voyage to the unknown coasts beyond the limits of the 

 last year's voyage. Only five miles were made on the first day, only twenty 

 in the first week, and it was the 18th before the party reached Point Barrow. 

 Ascending the rugged heights of this headland, and gazing eastward, Simpson 

 saw with astonishment and delight that the broad expanse of Coronation 

 Gulf was open and navigable. At the same date of the previous year it had 

 been covered with firm ice, and might have been crossed on foot by the whole 

 party. The wonderful difference in the state of the ice was accounted for by 

 the circumstances that, not only had the past winter been considerably less 

 severe than the preceding one, but that the present summer was much 

 warmer than that of 1838. Favoured by strong winds, and protected from 

 the prevailing streams of ice by the bulwark formed by the Wilmot Islands, 

 the broad inlet of Coronation Gulf was safely and rapidly traversed, and on 

 the 20th the party supped at Boathaven, where on the previous voyage they 

 had so long been detained by ice and hard weather. At Boathaven the wind 

 was blowing strong off land, and the "Castor" and "Pollux" ran rapidly up 

 along the west coast of Kent Peninsula to Cape Franklin, where they were 

 anchored soon after midnight of the same day — exactly one month earlier 

 than the date of Simpson's arrival with his pedestrian party at the same spot 

 in 1838. Ail the conditions of the present voyage seemed to be different 

 from those of the previous year ; for now, instead of finding the grand strait 

 between the northern shore of the American continent and Victoria Land 

 covered, as it was in the summer of 1838, with an unbroken sheet of ice, an 

 open channel was discovered, two miles wide, along the shore. " The slopes 

 and plains, too," says Simpson, " wore a greener and more cheerful aspect, 

 and the ground was comparatively dry. Besides mosses and dwarf carices 

 were to be seen flowers of various hues, wild sorrel, and an abundance 

 of the Labrador tea-plant {Ledum palustre), of very diminutive growth, but 

 at this time covered with fragrant white blossoms." 



On the 26th the explorers had reached Cape Alexander, and on the fol- 

 lowing day rounding Trap Cape, they entered a lane of water leading along 

 the shore to the extreme point of their advance the previous year. The top 

 of the cairn which they had there erected had fallen ; but they did not 

 wait to rebuild it, and only stopped to dig out the portable canoe they had 

 left buried in the sand ; " which done," exclaims Simpson, " we once more 

 entered upon ground never trodden by civilised man." Pushing on in a 

 south and south-east direction along the coast, Dease and Simpson dis- 

 covered and named Melbourne Island and Eoxborough Cape. South of the 

 latter extended Labyrinth Bay, a perfect maze of islands, beyond which a 

 range of picturesque, rocky heights, to which the name of Gloucester Hills 

 was given, extended away southward till they were lost in distance. EUice 

 River, a stream much larger than the Coppermine, and which enters the 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



