OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
43 
evening, when, the fog having cleared away, we bore 'up to the northward, 1819. 
keeping as near the western shore as the ice would permit ; but at eleven 
P.M. we were stopped in our progress by the ice extending to the land 
on the eastern side of the inlet, which obliged us to haul our wind. This 
part of the coast is much higher than that farther to the southward, and the 
soundings near it are also considerably deeper. 
On the 11th, the weather was so thick with fog and rain, that it was Wed. ll. 
impossible to ascertain in what direction we were going, which obliged me 
to make the ships fast to a floe till the weather should clear up. There 
being abundance of the purest water in pools upon the floe, our supply of 
this necessary article was completed on board each ship, and, in the mean 
time. Captain Sabine took the opportunity of repeating his observations 
upon the dip of the magnetic needle, the result of which, being 88° 25' 17", 
served to confirm those made on shore on the 7th. The repetition of such 
observations, which require considerable care and delicacy, is always satis- 
factory ; but was particularly so on this occasion from the circumstance 
already mentioned of having found at some distance from the place of 
observation on the 7th, a mass of magnetic iron stone, from which, or from 
other similar substances, it was possible that the needle might have suffered 
some disturbance. Captain Sabine also made some observations here on 
the intensity of the magnetic force, which will be found in the Appendix. 
In the evening, the boats succeeded in harpooning a narwhal, to the great 
delight of our Greenland sailors, who take so much pleasure in the sport to 
which they have been accustomed, that they could with difficulty be 
restrained at times from striking a whale, though such a frolic would 
almost inevitably have been attended with the loss of one or more of our 
lines. A few kittiwakes and arctic gulls were flying about the ice. 
A breeze sprung up from the northward on the morning of the 12th, butThur. 12. 
the weather was so foggy for some hours that we did not know in what 
direction it was blowing. As soon as the fog cleared away, so as to enable 
us to see a mile or two around us, we found that the floe to which we had 
anchored was drifting fast down upon another body of ice to leeward, 
threatening to enclose the ships between them. We, therefore, cast off, and 
made sail, in order to beat to the northward, which we found great difficulty 
in doing, oAving to the quantity of loose ice Avith Avhich this part of the inlet 
Avas now covered. A remarkably thick fog obscured the eastern land from 
our view this evening at the distance of five or six miles, Avhile the western 
