OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
261 
and numerous flocks of snow-buntings, were seen about the ships in the 
course of the day. 
The navigable channel increased so much in breadth, as we ran to the east- Sun. 27. 
ward with a fresh and favourable breeze, that at eight A.M,, on the morning 
of the 27th, when we had advanced beyond the east end of Melville Island, 
it was not less than ten miles wide. We kept near the ice, running at such a 
distance from it as not to get the ships embayed between the points, which 
often occasions a long and useless delay in afterwards beating round them 
with a scant wind. A constant look-out was kept from the crow’s-nest for an 
opening to the southward, but not a single break could be perceived in the 
mass of ice which still covered the sea in that direction. We were at noon 
in latitude 75° 02' 15", and longitude 105° 14' 20", the soundings being ninety- 
four fathoms, on a muddy bottom. Some water brought up from that depth 
in Dr. Marcet’s bottle was at the temperature of 31°£, that at the surface being 
30°, and of the air 31°. 
At seven P.M., a fog coming on, we hauled up close to the edge of the ice, 
both as a guide to us in sailing during the continuance of the thick weather, 
and to avoid passing any opening that might occur in it to the southward. We 
were, in the course of the evening, within four or five miles of the same spot 
where we had been on the same day, and at the same hour the preceding year; 
and by a coincidence perhaps still more remarkable, we were here once more 
reduced to the same necessity as before, of steering the ships by one another for 
an hour or two ; the Griper keeping the Hecla ahead, and our quarter-master 
being directed to keep the Griper right astern, for want of some better mode 
of knowing in what direction we were running. The fog froze hard as it fell 
upon the rigging, making it difficult to handle the ropes in working the ship, 
and the night was rather dark for three or four hours. 
A fresh breeze continued from the S.W.b.W., with some swell, to which Mon. 28. 
we had long been unaccustomed, and which, together with the extreme 
thickness of the weather, and the uncertainty of our course, made great 
caution necessary in running along the ice. We had for some time been 
steering principally by the moon, but when she became obscured, we were 
under the necessity of hauling our wind to the northward and westward, 
which led us from the ice, till the weather should become more favourable. 
The fog began to clear away at half-past five A.M. on the 28th, and imme- 
diately after we saw land from N.E.b.E, to N.N.W. The ships’ heads were 
now put to the S.S.E., in order to take up the ice where we had last seen it. 
