OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



2] 



On the 29th we were off a point of land, having several islands near it, 1821. 

 and exactly answering the description of that called by Baffin, in the year 

 1615, Broken Point, " it being, indeed, a point of broken isles." This head- Sun. 29. 

 land is memorable on account of a lunar observation made off it by this able 

 and indefatigable navigator, giving the long. 74° 05', which is not a degree to 

 the westward of the truth. Here the land turns more to the northward, leav- 

 ing a considerable opening in that direction. 



A very light wind, from the wrong quarter, rendered all our exertions 

 to get in shore fruitless, a close barrier still intervening between us and 

 the open sea. During the first part of the forenoon, we observed the ships 

 to be carried with the whole body of ice considerably towards the land, but at 

 noon, having moored the small boat to the bottom in one hundred and thirty 

 fathoms, the tide was found to run S. b. E., one mile per hour. Our latitude 

 observed was 63° 51' 44", longitude, by chronometers, 74° 02' 10". In 

 the evening, our prospect of an immediate release appearing more and more 

 hopeless, we were under the necessity of making fast, when we obtained azi- 

 muths on the ice, which gave the variation 54° 51' 58" westerly*. The ice 

 was found to have too much motion in azimuth for obtaining the dip, which 

 phenomenon now began to acquire great interest. At eight P. M., we once more 

 made sail and, after four hours' labour, the harassing nature of which cannot 

 well be described or imagined, succeeded in getting into good sailing ice at 

 midnight. The weather being now line, and the wind becoming more eas- 

 terly as well as freshening, we steered under all sail to the W. N. W. 



On the morning of the 30th, however, a fog came on, so thick that, Mon. 30. 

 independently of the danger of continuing to run upon a coast, little if at 

 all explored before, we also incurred the frequent risk of taking the wrong 

 " leads" among the ice ; which becoming closer obliged us to Heave to, soon 

 after six o'clock, and make the ships fast to a floe-piece. At nine A.M. 

 the fog clearing off sufficiently to allow us to see a mile or two around, 

 we cast off with a fresh breeze from the S.E. b. S., and ran to the north- 



* This result, however, which is deduced from several observations made by different 

 observers, is probably about three degrees more than the truth, an error having been 

 occasioned by the attraction of the ship, at the distance of 132 yards from the compasses. 

 The observations are given in the Appendix, merely to shew the regularity with which 

 an alteration took place in this error, occasioned by the motion of the floe to which the 

 ship was attached, and the consequent change of the angle at which the ship's attrac- 

 tion acted on the needles. 



