36 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



August to ^ ie nortn " east °^ lls ' there being between them a very wide open- 

 v^rv ing in which nothing but a sea incumbered with ice was visible from the 

 mast-head. The accounts given by Captain Middleton of the latitude of 

 the western entrance of the Frozen Strait are so confused, and even contra- 

 dictory *, that the present appearance of the land perplexed me extremely in 

 deciding whether or not we had arrived at the opposite end of the opening 

 to which he had given that name. That immediately before us to the west- 

 ward, though it agreed in latitude within five or six miles with the 

 southernmost parallel he has assigned to it, appeared much too narrow to 

 answer his description of the passage we were in search of. Upon the whole, 

 however, I thought it most probable that this was the strait in question ; and 

 as, at all events, the opening between Southampton Island and the land to 

 the northward of it, in whatever latitude it might be found and whether wide 

 or narrow, was the passage through which it was our present object to pene- 

 trate into Repulse Bay, I decided on using our utmost exertions to push 

 through the narrow strait now before us_ 



The wind moderating in the evening, and the ice after sunset once more 

 opening, enabled us to make another mile or two to the westward, after which 

 we lay to for the night. A great number of narwhals were playing about 

 the ship during the night, but they were, as usual, so wary that our boats 

 could not approach them. We remarked that scarcely in any part of the 

 polar regions previously visited, had we seen fewer birds than for some 

 days past ; a solitary glaucous gull, a hawk, and a boatswain being all that 

 had been noticed. The moon, in rising this evening, was curiously distorted 

 by refraction into the irregular shape of a shrivelled orange, f 

 Mon. 13. On the morning of the 13th the ships were pushed as far into the ice as the 

 closeness of it would allow, which brought us within ten or twelve miles of 

 the narrow part of the strait before us ; and, as we could still see no land 

 from the masthead when looking directly through it, we were naturally con- 

 firmed in the supposition that this was the Frozen Strait, beyond which we 



* As an instance of this, in the Furnace's log of August the 8th, Captain Middleton gives 

 the latitude of his ship by observation, 65° 38' to 65° 41', when close off the western entrance 

 of the Frozen Strait, which, from its south-easterly trending, is, also, the northernmost part 

 of it. In his letter to Mr. Dobbs, however, he says it is in 66° 40', and, just before, that it is 

 near the sixty-seventh degree of latitude. Neither the one nor the other has proved correct ; 

 but I have here quoted them, to explain the doubts which these contradictory statements 

 led me to entertain at this junctnre. 



