OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
15 
sailors whales’ food, and also of Beroes, which were very numerous near the 
surface of the water. 
On the 15th, the fog being still as thick as before, our latitude, observed on Thur. 15. 
an iceberg, was 70° 28' 52"; while that observed on board by Lieut. Beechey, 
with Captain Rater’s altitude-instrument, was 70° 27' 43", the difference accord- 
ing exactly with the bearing and distance of the iceberg from the ship. The 
longitude was 59° 1 T 58", and the variation of the needle, as observed upon 
the ice, had increased to 79° 48' westerly. Mr. Fisher made an experiment 
on the specific gravity of berg-ice. Having formed a piece of this ice into a 
cube, whose sides measured sixty-eight lines, he floated it in a tub of sea- 
water, of the specific gravity 1.0256, and at the temperature of 33°, when nine 
lines remained above the surface of the water, being nearly one-eighth. 
On the 16th, in running along the edge of the ice with a fresh breeze from Frid. 16. 
the south-west, we passed the Brunswick, whaler, of Hull, beating to the 
southward. She crossed within hail of the Griper, and the master infonned 
Lieutenant Liddon that he had, on the 11th, left a large fleet of fishing-ships 
about the latitude of 74°, unable to proceed farther to the northward. We had 
been stopped in a similar manner, and in the same place, on the voyage of 
1818, which renders it not improbable, that, at this period of the year, the 
same obstruction will generally be found to occur about that latitude. The 
annual experience of the whalers has, indeed, long ago, made it evident, that 
the facility with which a ship may sail up Davis’ Strait, depends entirely 
upon the season at which the attempt is made. For the first fortnight in 
June, it is seldom practicable to get much beyond the Island of Disko, or 
about the latitude of 69° to 70°. Towards the 20th of that month, the ships 
usually reach the great inlet, called North-East Bay ; and, by the end of 
June, the ice allows them, though not without great exertion, to penetrate 
to the Three Islands of Baffin, which lie just beyond the seventy-fourth 
degree of latitude. From that time till about the end of August, the ice 
presents, almost daily, less and less obstruction ; so that, if the object be 
simply to sail as far north as possible into Baffin’s Bay, without regard to the 
capture of whales, there is every reason to believe that a ship, entering Davis’ 
Strait on the 1st of July, may sail into the latitude of 74“ or 75“, without 
meeting with any detention on account of the ice, and, perhaps, without 
even seeing the land till she arrive in a high latitude. 
On the I7th, the margin of the ice appearing more open than we had yet Sat. 17. 
seen it, and there being some appearance of a “ water-sky” to the north- 
