PRELIMINARY EXPEDITION. 437 



ing out from the beach, which I conjectured might be from the lake ; but on 

 -landing we found it was from a small stream, flowing to the eastward of 

 a large fresh-water lagoon, and separated from it by a narrow belt of 

 marshy land. Where the lagoon terminated, the hills on its southern shores 

 bent round to the south-east, forming the south-west boundary of the flat 

 marshy land, from which the stream issued in a direction north-east by east. 

 Cape Lisburne now bore from us west, fourteen or fifteen miles distant, 

 and the direction of the lagoon was west-half-south, its eastern extreme from 

 two to three hundred feet from the sea. To the eastward of this the coast, 

 as far as Cape Sabine, consisted of high muddy banks, faced occasionally 

 with immense accumulations of snow, quite overhanging a narrow beach, and 

 requiring a much greater duration of powerful sunshine than this part of 

 the world is ever blessed with to clear it away. As Cape Sabine was to be 

 the limit of my examination for the present, we landed a short distance to 

 the westward of it about noon, close to the mouth of a small stream, with 

 not water enough in it to float a jolly boat. Up to this time the weather 

 had been perfectly calm, but now a light breeze sprang up from the west- 

 ward, which I expected would soon bring up the ships, which were to pick 

 us up off this cape, so we hauled up; but by two o'clock the gradually 

 increasing breeze had raised so much surf on the beach, that we were 

 obliged to launch the boats and anchor at the back of it. When, however, 

 at four o'clock, there was still no appearance of the ships, we weighed and 

 puUed towards Cape Lisburne that we might the sooner meet them. 



" At eleven o'clock that night we were only off the eastern end of the 

 lagoon, but as the wind was now decreasing, it was likely we should make 

 better progress henceforward, and accordingly we hauled more off shore, and 

 at midnight anchored some distance from the nearest land, and from where 

 we were could hear what we believed to be a heavy surf continually break- 

 ing on the beach. At four o'clock on the morning of Sunday the 22d, we 

 weighed with a light westerly breeze, and shortly after saw a sail in the offing 

 with courses down, standing to the north. We hauled out for her, and soon 

 saw another to the northward of the first. When we had continued to 

 pull for another quarter of an hour, and still saw no sign of a third vessel, 

 I naturally concluded that the two seen were whalers, and resumed my 

 course for Cape Lisburne, expecting to find the ships at the anchorage where 

 I had left them on the preceding Friday evening ; but in another quarter of 

 an hour we observed a third sail a long way to the southward, and almost 

 at the same moment we saw the smoke of a gun rolling off in eddies from 

 the side of the mid-ship and first seen vessel, and this was sufficient to satisfy 

 me that she was the ' Herald,' the northerly one the yacht, and the last of 

 all the poor ' Plover,' with every possible stitch of canvas set, making the 

 most vigorous, but unfortunately unavailing, efforts to get on. At seven 



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