OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
189 
The latitude observed here was 75° 22' 43", and the longitude, by the 1820. 
chronometer, 111° 14' 26", in which situation a cylinder of tin, containing an 
account of our visit, was deposited under a pile of stones eight feet high, 
and seven feet broad at the base. At half past five P.M. we continued our 
march in a north-easterly direction, the wind being moderate from the S.S.E., 
with fine weather. Another of our party complained of snow-blindness, 
which always continued to be very painful during the time we were walking, 
but was generally relieved by the usual cool bathing and a few hours’ rest. 
Our people were all supplied with crape veils, which, I believe, saved us a 
good deal of uneasiness from this complaint. 
On leaving the ravine, where we had last halted, we had entered on 
another snowy plain similar to those I have before described; and, after 
travelling several miles over it without a single object to produce variety, or 
to excite interest, came at length to a rising ground at half past eleven, from 
which we descried some dark-coloured ground to the north-eastward, and 
shortly after some higher land at a considerable distance beyond it, in the 
same direction. The intermediate space looked like a sea covered with ice, 
or a very level snowy plain, and we were once more puzzled to know which 
of these two it would prove. Having reached a good dry spot for the tents, 
with plenty of water in the neighbourhood, we halted at midnight, having 
marched seven miles and a half in a N. b. E. direction by account, but much 
more easterly by subsequent observations. I cannot help remarking in this 
place how extremely liable to error any account must necessarily be of the 
course and distance made good during even a single day on a journey of this 
nature. We had long been in the habit of deducing all our bearings and 
courses on board the ships astronomically, that is, by the azimuth of the sun 
and the apparent time ; and when I set out on this journey I had conceived 
that this habit would have enabled me to make tolerably certain at least of 
the direction in which our daily journey had been performed, whenever 
the sun should be visible. That this was by no means the case, though every 
possible attention was paid to it, will appear clear from an inspection of our 
track upon the map, which is laid down by the actual observations of two 
separate persons from day to day, and in which no material error could have ' 
occurred. My reason for dwelling upon this circumstance is to point out the 
extreme liability to error in laying down by account the position of any point 
at which a traveller may arrive after a journey of several hundred miles. This 
remark I cannot but consider to be peculiarly applicable to the journey of 
