25 
Sketched by B. M-Cormich, R.N. 
Domville Point, N. 
backed by a ridge of hills from 100 to 200 feet in hight, receding inland in the 
form of an amphitheatre. 
On first rounding the north point, an arm of the bay runs into the N.E. ; here 
we passed a snug little creek enclosed in the shingle banks, leaving an opening 
just sufficient for admitting a boat, secure from ice and weather ; but having a 
fair wind, I was anxious to make the most of it, inauspicious as was the aspect 
of the heavens. 
We reached the top of the bay, which is about six miles in depth, at 7 p.m., 
and found a low shingle and mud flat, backed by boggy ground, and extending 
inland to the base of the amphitheatre of hills, interspersed near the beach by 
pools of water, which appeared to be full of small fish, as the gulls were far 
more numerous here than at any other spot we have yet visited. A large group 
of kittiwakes and fulmar petrel, with an ivory gull or two amongst them, were 
evidently making a good harvest, repeatedly rising with a fish about the size of 
a pilchard in their beaks after each rapid downward plunge in the water. A 
solitary arctic gull was actively carrying on at the same time his buccaniering 
depredations amongst them whenever an opportunity offered for robbing an 
unlucky gull of its prey, by compelling it to drop the fish with a scream, which, 
with great tact, was caught by this sea rover before it dropped into the water. 
I ran the boat's head in, but the water was so shoal that she grounded at too 
great a distance from the beach to effect a landing ; and just as I was about 
stepping out at a more favourable spot, a little further on, with the intention of 
shooting some of the birds and obtaining specimens of the fish they had 
swallowed, a bear was discovered on the floe which filled up the inlet at the 
S. W. corner of the bay. Bruin being considered by all hands, and certainly not 
the least so by myself, higher game than the gulls, the sail was hoisted instanter, 
and the boat's head in a few minutes was dashing through the swell (which was 
now setting into the more exposed part of the bay) before the wind in the direction 
bruin was leisurely pacing along the ice, on the look out for a seal, several of 
which were swimming about the bay. Before we reached the floe, which was of 
young ice already six inches in thickness, he had, however, taken alarm, and 
made off for the land, disappearing behind a point jutting out from the inlet. 
Finding that the squall which had been threatening for some time was 
now coming in good earnest upon us, I brought the boat's head round for the 
south headland of the bay, the site of our former encampment upon the way up 
channel, in a sheltered cove a little within the headland; but as we became more 
and more exposed to the sea setting into the bay, in a boat so deep in tlie Avater, 
and so leaky from one of her planks having been stove in by the ice in the bad 
weather we had been incessantly exposed to, the water from the leak, together 
with the occasional shipping of a sea, so gained upon us, notwithstanding that a 
hand was kept unceasingly baling her out, and having no rudder, Ave had to bear 
up for the nearest land to us, distant nearly two miles, although unfortunately a 
D 
