VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
244 ' 
1820. given them steerage-way, even in a clear and unincumbered sea, and much 
less, therefore, could have enabled them to force their way through the 
numberless heavy masses which lay in our way to the westward. So close, 
indeed, did the ice about us still continue, that it was necessary to shift 
the Hecla once more round to the westward of the point of land, to secure 
her from that which the change of wind was once more bringing back in 
great abundance, and at the rate of nearly a mile per hour. In an hour 
after we had effected this, I had reason to be satisfied with the deter- 
mination to which I had come, of not getting the ships under-way, for there 
was literally not a single “ hole” of open water visible from the mast-head, 
in which a boat would have floated, except immediately under the lee of 
the point where we were lying, and within one hundred yards of the ship. 
The latitude observed at our present station was 74° 25' 35", the longitude, 
by chronometers, 113° 43' 01", and the variation of the magnetic needle, 
106° 06' 38" Easterly, each of these being the mean of several observations 
taken on different days. There was nothing in the appearance or productions 
of this part of the island different from those which had been found elsewhere, 
except that the ravines were more strikingly grand and picturesque, in con- 
sequence of the greater height of the land upon this part of the coast : this, 
as I have before remarked, was found, in one instance, to exceed eight 
hundred feet above the level of the sea ; and the hills, immediately at the 
back of this, at the distance of nine or ten miles, appeared to be at least 
one or two hundred feet higher; so that the extreme height of Melville 
Island, as far as we had an opportunity of seeing it, may, perhaps, be 
fairly estimated at about one thousand feet. The rocks consisted entirely of 
sandstone in horizontal strata, and the soil of sand, intermixed occasionally 
with decayed plants, forming here and there a sort of vegetable mould, on 
which the other plants, and a few tufts of very luxuriant moss, were 
growing: we remarked, that almost the whole of the plants had a part 
of their flowers cropped by the hares, and other animals which are fond 
of feeding in the sheltered and Avarm situations afforded by the banks next 
the sea. 
The Aveather was foggy for some hours in the morning, but cleared up in - 
the afternoon, as the sun acquired poAver. The wind increased to a fresh 
gale from the eastward, at nine P.M., being the second time that it had done 
so, Avhile Ave had been lying at this station ; a circum.stance Avhich we AA^ere 
the more inclined to notice, as the easterly Avinds had hitherto been more 
/ 
