OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
223 
The wind having come round to the southward in the afternoon, caused 1820. 
the separation of a large portion of ice on the northern side of that which 
now occupied the harbour, and the detached pieces drifting down towards us, 
rendered it necessary to be on our guard lest the ships should be forced from 
their anchorage. On this account, as well as from an anxious and impatieilt 
desire to make a move, however trifling, from a spot in which we had 
now unwillingly but unavoidably passed nearly ten months, and of which 
we had long been heartily tired, I directed lines to be run out for the pur- 
pose of warping the ships along the ice in the centre of the harbour, and at 
half-past two P.M., the anchors were weighed. As soon as a strain was 
put upon the lines, however, we found that the ice to which they were 
attached came home upon us, instead of the ships being drawn out to the 
southward, and we were, therefore, obliged to have recourse to the kedge- 
anchors, which we could scarcely find room to drop, on account of the 
closeness of the ice. Having warped a little way out from the shore, into 
five fathoms and a half, it was found impossible to proceed any farther 
without a change of wind, and the anchors were, therefore, dropped till 
such a change should take place. In the course of the evening all the loose 
ice drifted past us to the northward, loading that shore of the harbour with 
innumerable fragments of it, and leaving a considerable space of clear 
water along shore to the southward. Our hunting parties were now recalled, 
and returned on board in good health in the course of this and the following 
day ; having supplied us, during the whole time which this mode had been 
adopted, with a quantity of game sufficient to substitute for more than one 
month’s established proportion of meat on board both ships. Their success 
had of late, however, become very indifferent, as they had not seen a deer 
for several days, and the birds were grown extremely shy, A herd of 
seven musk-oxen had lately been met with to the south-west. 
On the morning of the 26th, it was nearly calm, with continued rain and Wed. 26. 
thick weather ; and there being now a space of clear water for nearly three- 
quarters of a mile to the southward of us, we took advantage of a breeze which 
sprung up from the northward to weigh, at nine A.M. and run down as far as the 
ice would permit, and then dropped our anchors in the best births we could 
select, close to the edge of it, with the intention of advancing step b)’' step, 
as it continued to separate by piece-meal. The ice across the entrance of 
the harbour as far as this spot, and the whole of that in the offing, of which 
we had here a commanding view from the Hecla’s crow’s-nest, was still 
