222 
VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
1820. 
Sat. 22, 
Sun 23. 
Mon. 24. 
Tues. 25, 
There was a fresh breeze from the north-eastward, with fine clear weather, 
on the 22d, which made the Hecla swing round into twenty feet water astern ; 
and the ice, being now moveable in the harbour, came home towards the 
shore with this wind, but not so much as to put any considerable strain on 
the cable of either ship ; and the holding-ground being excellent, there was 
nothing to apprehend for their security. 
During a walk which I took to the southward this day for the purpose of 
examining the ice near the mouth of the harbour, I was glad to find that a 
quantity of it had lately been forced up on the reef, by the pressure of the 
external ice, a proof that it had some room in which to acquire motion, 
and which encouraged a hope that when the wind should blow directly off 
the land, it might drift the ice sufficiently from the shore to afford us a navi- 
gable channel to the westward. I, therefore, went down in a boat in the 
afternoon, to see if any thing could be done, but found the shore so loaded 
with broken ice which a north-east wind had first separated and then drifted 
upon the beach, that I could not get so far as the south point of the entrance. 
A fresh gale which blew from the northward, on the morning of the 23d, 
caused a great alteration in the appearance of the ice near the ships, but 
none whatever in that in the offing, or at the mouth of the harbour, except 
that the shores were there more encumbered than before, owing to the 
quantity of pieces which were separated and driven down from the north- 
ward, so that our small boat could not succeed in getting along the shore. 
The north shore of the harbour was now, however, so clear as to induce me 
to send Lieutenant Beechey with two boats to haul the seine, -in the hope of 
catching some such fish as we had some time ago found upon the ice. Our 
fishermen, however, had little success, having brought on board only three 
small fish, which were all that were found in the net. 
On the 24th, the sails were bent, in readiness for our starting at a moment’s 
notice, though, it must be confessed, that the motive for doing so was to 
make some show of moving, rather than any expectation which I dared to 
entertain of soon escaping from our long and tedious confinement; for it was 
impossible to conceal from the men the painful fact, that, in eight or nine 
weeks from this period, the navigable season must unavoidably come to a 
conclusion. 
I went away in a boat early on the morning of the 25th, in order to sound 
the harbour, in those parts where the ice would admit the boat, with a view 
to take advantage of the first favourable change which might present itself. 
