OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



339 



pieces. This land, from abreast the west end of Amherst Island, changes 

 its aspect very much, the hills becoming less rugged to the westward, and 

 having at their foot a sloping plain covered with fine pasturage, extending 

 in one place four or five miles towards the sea. On this plain we passed 

 several circles of stones, placed by the Esquimaux, and others set up in a 

 similar manner to those before observed in different parts of the coast. 

 These did not bear the marks of having been recently visited ; but the tracks 

 of deer were so numerous, and the aspect of the country so favourable for 

 a summer residence, that it appeared a likely place for the Esquimaux to 

 resort to occasionally during that season." 



The result of our late endeavours, necessarily cramped as they had been, 

 was to confirm, in the most satisfactory manner, the conviction that we were 

 now in the only passage leading to the westward that existed in this neigh- 

 bourhood. There was, and indeed still is, reason to believe, from the 

 information of the Esquimaux, that Cockburn Island extends two degrees to 

 the ^northward and very considerably to the eastward of this Strait. To 

 have abandoned without further trial the most promising place, as respects 

 the North -West Passage, that the most sanguine mind could hope to dis- 

 cover, upon the chance of saving time by pursuing a circuitous route of 

 perhaps three or four hundred miles of unknown coast, and of finding a 

 more navigable passage two degrees farther north, I should have considered 

 an unjustifiable departure from the plain tenor of my instructions, if not a 

 direct abandonment of the cause in which we were engaged. Notwithstand- 

 ing, therefore, the present unpromising appearance of the ice, I had no 

 alternative left me but patiently to await its disruption, and instantly to avail 

 myself of any alteration that nature might yet effect in our favour. 



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