OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
41 
A boat from each ship was prepared to conduct this examination, and we 
stood in to drop them in-shore, but found, as we approached, that the bay was 
so filled with ice, as to render it impracticable for any boat to land. I there- 
fore determined, as the season was fast advancing to a close, to lose no time 
in returning to the northward, in the hope of finding the channel between 
Prince Leopold’s Isles and Maxwell Bay more clear of ice than when we left 
it, in which case there could be little doubt of our effecting a passage to the 
westward ; whereas, in our present situation, there appeared no prospect of 
our doing so without risking the loss of more time than I deemed it prudent 
to spare. 
I have before observed that the east and west lands which form this grand 
inlet are probably islands : and, on an inspection of the charts, I think it will 
also appear highly probable that a communication will one day be found to 
exist between this inlet and Hudson’s Bay, either through the broad and unex- 
plored channel, called Sir Thomas Rowe’s Welcome, or through Repulse Bay, 
which has not yet been satisfactorily examined. It is also probable, that a 
channel will be found to exist between the western land and the northern coast 
of America ; in which case the flood-tide which came from the southward may 
have proceeded round the southern point of the west land out of the Polar sea, 
part of it setting up the inlet, and part down the Welcome, according to the 
unanimous testimony of all the old navigators, who have advanced up the 
latter channel considerably to the northward. 
The distance which we sailed to the southward in this inlet was about 
one hundred and twenty miles, Cape Kater being, by our observations, in 
lat. 71° 53' 30", long. 90° 03' 45'; and I saw no reason to doubt the practi- 
cability of ships penetrating much farther to the south, by watching the 
occasional openings in the ice, if the determining the geography of this part 
of the arctic regions be considered worth the time which must necessarily be 
occupied in effecting it. The ice which we met with in the southern part 
of this inlet was much less broken into pieces than that to the northward ; 
and the floes, some of which not less than nine or ten feet thick, 
were covered with innumerable little round “ hummocks,” as they are 
called by the Greenland seamen, which are perhaps first formed by the 
drift of the snow in particular situations, and which by alternate thawing and 
freezing, become as solid and transparent as any other part of the ice. 
This peculiarity I never remember to have remarked on the floes in Baffin’s 
Bay, on which a carriage might travel without much inconvenience, except 
G 
