232 
VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
1820. shipping the rudders, if necessary. The floe was brought up, however, by 
the masses of ice a-ground outside of us, with which it successively came in 
contact, and the ships remained in perfect security ; the floe, as usual after 
the first violence is over, moved off again to a little distance from the shore. 
The meridian altitude of the sun gave the latitude of this station 74° 36' 06", 
and the longitude by the chronometers was 111° 16' 39", 
At noon the heavy floe at the point near us began to quit the land, and 
at half-past one P.M., there being a narrow passage between them, the 
breadth of which the breeze was constantly increasing, we cast off and 
stretched to the westward. The channel which opened to us as we pro- 
ceeded, varied in its general breadth from one to two miles ; in some places 
it was not more than half a mile. The soundings were very regular, and 
sufficiently deep close to the shore ; in one place we found twenty-three 
fathoms at one hundred yards from the beach, in another fourteen at sixty 
or seventy yards. At seven P.M., we passed the place where we had been 
detained so long during the preceding September, and where Mr. Fife and 
his party had been lost. We here seemed to be among our old acquaintance ; 
and among these, the berg to which we had been anchored during so many 
days of anxiety and fruitless labour was easily recognised, as well as the pile of 
stones which had been erected on the hill above it. The wind was variable 
and squally, but we made great progress along the land to the S.W.b.W., and 
the Griper, by keeping up tolerably with the Hecla, in some measure re- 
deemed her character with us. Having arrived off Cape Providence at eleven 
P.M., the wind became light and baffling, so that we had just got far enough 
to see that there was a free and open channel, beyond the westernmost 
point visible of Melville Island, when our progress was almost entirely 
stopped for want of a breeze to enable us to take advantage of it. The 
anxiety which such a detention occasions, in a sea where, without any ap- 
parent cause, the ice frequently closes the shore in the most sudden manner, 
can perhaps only be conceived by those who have experienced it. We had 
now, also, arrived off that part of the coast which, from Cape Providence 
westward, is high and steep near the sea, having no beach or shelving shore 
on which the heavy masses of ice can fix themselves, so as to afford security 
to a ship when the floes approach the land, which circumstance increased 
the anxiety we felt to push on, while the present opportunity offered, 
with all rapidity to the westward. We remarked, in sailing near the ice 
this evening, while the wind was blowing a fresh breeze off the land, 
