OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



317 



the northward, the main ice having in the meantime disappeared so effectually A 182 

 that nothing- was eventually lost by our late detention. After standing on ^ 

 for an hour or two we had scarcely any ice about us, and by midnight were 

 entirely clear of it. 



The wind gradually falling was succeeded by a light north-easterly Mod 

 breeze, with which at daylight on the 26th we steered under all possible 

 sail up the Strait. The course being shaped and no ice in our way, I 

 then went to bed; but was immediately after informed by Mr. Crozier that 

 the compasses had shifted from N.JE., which was the course I left them 

 indicating, to E.|N., being a change of seven points, in less than ten mi- 

 nutes. After running half a mile in a true W.b.N. direction, the needles 

 began to return to their true position; in half a mile farther they had resumed 

 their proper direction and agreed exactly at North. Having sent a boat, to 

 the Hecla immediately on our noticing the first alteration, I found from 

 Captain Lyon that a similar phenomenon was observed to take place on 

 board that ship, which was following in our wake. The breeze slowly in- 

 creasing from the eastward, and the weather happily remaining unusually 

 clear for that direction of the wind, we soon arrived off the narrow part of 

 the Strait, immediately on opening which, we met a tide or current running 

 above two knots to the eastward with numerous eddies and ripplings. By 

 keeping on the south or continental shore, and passing along by Cape North- 

 East, within two or three hundred yards of the rocks, we succeeded with 

 the assistance of the boats a-head in getting through the channel soon after 

 eleven o'clock. 



The length of this narrowest part of the Strait is three miles, in an E.b.S. 

 and W.b.N. direction ; it is two miles across and nearly uniform in its width 

 the whole way through. The rocks of red sandstone on the south side shelve 

 gradually down from a height of three or four hundred feet, so that in sail- 

 ing through we had generally two fathoms more depth of water on the outer 

 than on the inner side of the ship, the soundings continuing deep however 

 almost close to the shore. The opposite or northern land of the narrows, 

 where on closer examination we found several islands, is also high, but less 

 shelving than the other, and presenting when clear of snow a much darker 

 appearance. The eastern point of the entrance on this shore, which I named 

 Cape Ossory, has a small rocky islet lying close off it, upon which there was 

 much heavy ice aground. In several other places also on both sides, but 

 particularly on the south shore, large heaps of ice lay piled up upon the rocks 



