30 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



August fine for the rest of the da ^* With the hope of g ainin & some ground we 

 v-*-v^ cast off, but found it impossible to make any progress through the ice, which, 



though its general body continued closely packed, was, in some parts, run- 

 ning about in various and even opposite directions, at the rate of two or 

 three miles an hour, so as frequently to come in forcible contact with the 

 ships, without the possibility of our avoiding it by sailing out of its way. 

 The rapidity and irregularity of the tides in this neighbourhood were parti- 

 cularly remarked by our early navigators, and, indeed, gave the name to 

 Mill Islands, " by reason of grinding the ice." There can be little doubt 

 that this irregularity is principally occasioned by a meeting of the tides 

 hereabouts, for there is tolerable evidence of the flood coming from the 

 northward down the great opening leading to Fox's Farthest, and which I 

 have called Fox's Channel*. This tide, meeting the rapid stream which sets 

 from the eastward through Hudson's Strait, must, of necessity, produce such 

 a disturbance as has here been noticed. The current was tried at noon, 

 this day, and found to set north by west, three quarters of a mile an hour, 

 and at thirty minutes past nine, P.M., it was running to the south-east one 

 mile per hour, but which of these was the flood tide we had no means of 

 determining. 



Sat. 4. At ten A.M., on the 4th, we saw an appearance of land, much raised and 

 distorted by refraction, though the weather was fine, and the atmosphere 

 apparently clear, from N. 82° E. to S. 53° E., being part of the coast dis- 

 covered by Baffin, in the year 1615, and more minutely traced by Fox, in 

 1631. At noon we observed in lat. 65° 00' 17", the longitude, by chro- 

 nometers, being 79° 56' 55". At this time, the prospect to the westward 

 appeared from the crow's-nest as unpromising, on account of the closeness 

 and extent of the ice, as I ever remember to have seen it. Shortly after- 

 wards, however, the sea gradually, or rather suddenly, became navigable 

 in that direction, the ice separating and, in fact, disappearing in so rapid 

 and extraordinary a manner as to astonish even those among us who had 

 been the longest accustomed to this navigation, and affording a striking 

 example of those sudden changes which, in icy seas, almost teach us never 

 to despair of making progress, even under circumstances apparently the 



* Baffin particularly insists on this being the case, both near Trinity Islands, and off 

 Southampton Island ; and, I think, notwithstanding a contrary opinion held by Fox and 

 Yourin, our observations on the tides in this neighbourhood, and subsequently at Winter 

 Island, serve to confirm those of Baffin. 



