300 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



1822. extensive and dangerous were the latter, that the men could with extreme 

 s^^J difficulty walk twenty or thirty yards from the ship to place the anchors, and 

 that at no small risk of falling through. The shape of the ponds and holes 

 being serpentine and various, and their blue colour forming a striking con- 

 trast with the whiteness of the snow that lay on the ice, gave the floe when 

 viewed from the mast-head an appearance not unlike that of the fancy-patterns 

 one sometimes sees on cloths or paper-hangings. We were astonished there- 

 fore to find with what tenacity a field of ice, whose parts appeared thus loosely 

 joined, still continued to hang together, notwithstanding the action of the 

 swell that almost constantly set upon its margin. 

 Sun. 4. 1^ weather, which had for several hours been rainy and thick, cleared up 

 about noon on the 4th, in consequence of the wind shifting to the N.W., 

 when we made sail from the floe in order to look for our buoy, and to con- 

 tinue our observations on the magnetic attraction in that neighbourhood. 

 After making several tacks as near the place as the bearings of the land and 

 the soundings could direct us, but without discovering the buoy, we were 

 obliged for the present to give up the attempt ; having, to our great satisfac- 

 tion, observed a floe at least three miles in length and two in breadth just 

 detached from the fixed ice, and rendering it necessary for us to work out of 

 its way, lest it should force us towards the shore. We only, therefore, 

 waited to put down some nets to ascertain the nature of the bottom, and then 

 hauled round the floe. A quantity of shells, among which were a few of the 

 new species of anomia discovered on the last voyage, with some shrimps and 

 echini, were all that we could thus fish up. Having cleared the end of the 

 floe, which drifted rapidly away and, as usual here, never made its appear- 

 ance afteiwards, we made the ships fast to the fixed ice at eight P.M., having 

 by the late disruption made considerable progress in the direction of the 

 strait. 



Mon. 5. At nine A.M., on the 5th, the temperature of some sea-water brought up 

 from near the bottom in fifty-seven fathoms, was 32|°, that of the air being 

 34°, and of the surface 301°. The specific gravity of the former was found 

 by Mr. Fisher to be 1.0286, at the temperature of 40°*. What made the 

 temperature and specific gravity of the sea- water here a particular object of 

 curiosity was the fact before conjectured, but now satisfactorily confirmed, 



* The specific gravity of the surface-water in this neighbourhood will be found, for a few 

 days about this time, in the Meteorological Abstract. 



