PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
307 
ship ; and from the number of bergs increasing as they advanced, the CHAP, 
sanguine expectations in which they had indulged gradually diminished. 
These bergs were seen off a point of land to which I gave the name of Narrative 
Smyth, in compliment to the officer who accompanied the boat ex- Barge, 
pedition, and very deservedly obtained his promotion for that service. 
In the course of their run they passed a village, where the inhabitants, 
seeing them so near, came out of their yourts, and men, women, chil- 
dren, and dogs set up a loud hallooing until they were gone. Upon 
Cape Smyth there was also a village, the inhabitants of which accosted 
them with the same hooting noises as before. 
Advancing to the northward with the wind off the land, they saw 
the main body of ice about seven miles distant to the westward, and 
were much encumbered by the icebergs, which they could only avoid 
by repeatedly altering the course. The land from Cape Smyth, which 
w^as about forty-five feet in height, sloped gradually to the northward, and 
terminated in a low point which has been named Point Barrow. From 
the rapidity with which the boat passed the land, there appears to 
have been a current setting to the north-east. The water about half 
a mile from the cape was between six and seven fathoms. 
W ednesday, 23d Aug. “ Arriving about two a. m. off the low 
point, we found it much encumbered with ice, and the current setting 
N.W.(mag.) between three and four miles an hour. Opening the prospect 
on its eastern side, the view was obstructed by a barrier of ice which 
appeared to join with the land. This barrier seemed high ; but as there 
was much refraction, in this we might possibly have been deceived. 
The weather assuming a very unsettled appearance in the offing (and 
the S. Fi. breeze dying away), we had every reason to expect the wind 
from the westward ; and knowing the ice to extend as far south as 71°, 
the consequences that would attend such a shift were so evident, that 
we judged it prudent not to attempt penetrating any farther, especially 
in this advanced state of the season. Accordingly we anchored within 
the eighth of a mile of the point, under shelter of an iceberg about 
fourteen feet high, and from fifty to sixty feet in length, that had 
grounded in four fathoms water. On the eastern side of the point there 
was a village, larger than any we had before seen, consisting entirely of 
B R 2 
