7 
Encampment in Emery Bay. 
to a fresh gale, accompanied by sleet and snow ; the thermometer 28° ; air cold 
and pinching, and the whole of the land more deeply covered with snow than 
any that we had yet passed. The horizon to the north looked black and 
threatening, and a faint pinkish streak of light seemed to give an additional 
air of wildness to its aspect. The night, too, was fast closing in, with no 
prospect before us of the smallest nook where we could haul up the boat in 
safety till the morning. A long way ahead of us tiu'ee bold capes appeared 
in the distance ; the nearest, a remarkably black-looking one, prominently jutting 
out from the snow-clad ridges flanking it on either side. Aground off it was a 
large mass of ice of fantastic shape, rising from the sea by a narrow neck and 
then expanding out into the form of an urn, appearing as if filled with white 
foam rising above the brim in a convex form. A long stream of ice was seen 
extending out from the Black Cape, which led me to hope that we should find 
a bay on the other side of it out of which the ice had drifted, and a place of 
refuge for the night, for my boat's crew were fairly worn out by pulling for so 
many hours against a head-sea and strong current, (running here, at times, five 
or six knots an hour) and exposed to such inclement weather. 
In passing a low shingle ridge, before we reached the black headland, a cairn 
upon it caught my eye through the dark gloom in which it was enveloped, and 
although an ice-girt lee shore upon which a heavy surf was setting, I felt that it 
was my duty to attempt a landing to examine it. The boat's head was there- 
fore at once directed for the shore, and run in between two heavy grounded 
masses of ice, leaving just room enough for her bows to enter ; the ridge of 
shingle was too steep to haul her up, or I should gladly have encamped there 
for the night, unfavourable as was the spot for pitching our tent. We had to 
walk along the ridge over snow, in some places very deep, before we reached 
the cairn, and, to our great disappointment, after pulling it down and carefully 
examining the ground beneath and around it, found no record whatever. It 
was a small pile of rocks resembling a surveying mark, but when and by whom 
erected no clue was left upon which to form a conjecture. We saw here recent 
tracks of bears and foxes on the snow. Returning to our boat, after some 
difficulty in embarking in the swell, the crew, to whom I had given a little 
brandy each, pulled under its temporary influence with renewed vigour for the 
Black Cape. 
That harbinger of the storm, the stormy petrel or Mother Carey's chicken 
{Procellaria pelagica), the first I have seen during this voyage to the Arctic 
regions, flew past the boat, and I fired at it but missed it, the'bo^it rolling at the 
A 4 
