OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
233 
and therefore directly towards the ice, that it remained constantly calm 1820. 
within three or four hundred yards of the latter ; this effect I never remember 
to have witnessed before, upon the windward side of any collection of ice, 
though it invariably happens in a remarkable degree to leeward of it. I may 
here mention, as a striking proof of the accuracy with which astronomical 
bearings of objects may be taken for marine surveys, that the relative bearing 
of Capes Providence and Hay, as obtained this evening when the two head- 
lands were opening, (being g } 82° 38' (w.,) differed only one minute from 
that entered in the surveying-book, and found in the same manner, the pre- 
ceding year. 
We had this evening occasion to observe once more that darkness in the 
horizon to the southward, and as far as a S.S.W. bearing, which had been 
noticed from this station in 1819, and more frequently since that time, during 
our detention in Winter Harbour, as bearing a great resemblance to the loom 
of land in that quarter. We were the more inclined to the belief that there 
was land at no very great distance to the southward, from the conviction that 
there must be something which prevented the ice being drifted off the shore 
of Melville Island in this place more than five or six miles, with any direction 
or force of wind. 
There was a very light air on the morning of the 5th, which died away an Sat. 5. 
hour before noon, when the opportunity was taken to bring up some water 
from the depth of one- hundred and five fathoms. Its temperature on coming 
to the surface was 32°, that of the surface water being 31°!, and of the air 34°. 
The depth of water here was two hundred and twenty-five fathoms, on a 
bottom of dark brown clay, at the distance of four miles from the land ; the 
latitude observed being 74° 21' 49", and the longitude by chronometers 
112° 48' 18". 
At one P.M., the weather continuing quite calm, and being desirous of 
examining the ice in-shore, that we might be ready for the floes closing 
upon us, I left the ship, accompanied by Captain Sabine and Mr. Edwards, 
and landed near one of the numerous deep and broad ravines, with which 
the whole of this part of the island is indented. All the ice which was here 
fixed to the ground was literally upon the beach, with very deep water close 
alongside of it, and none of the masses projected to a sufficient distance 
from the shore, to afford the smallest shelter to the ships in case of accidents. 
We saw several white hares here, and on this and many subsequent occasions 
found them frequent the sides of the high banks which face the south, and 
2H 
