262 
VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
1820. but at six o’clock, in approaching some heavy detached masses, which ap- 
peared to be aground, and therefore made us very cautious with the hand- 
leads, we shoaled the water rather more suddenly than usual from thirty-five 
to ten, and then to seven, fathoms, and tacked in five and three quarters 
at the distance of half a mile to the westward of the grounded ice. There is 
certainly no land within two or three leagues of this shoal, on which, how- 
ever, I have little doubt, from the appearance of the ice aground upon it, 
there is water enough for any ship, and which will probably be at all times 
clearly pointed out by the never-failing beacons of these seas. It is cus- 
tomary to judge by the tide-mark upon the ice whether it be aground or not, 
and by its dimensions whether it may be boldly approached. 
Having hauled to the N.N.E., and then gradually more to the eastward, we 
deepened our water till no soundings could be obtained with forty fathoms 
of line, and then steered again to the S.E., in order to make the main ice. 
The impossibility of keeping any thing like an accurate reckoning during the 
last night’s run, and the difficulty of recognising the land in consequence of 
the snow which now almost entirely covered it, left us for some time at a loss 
to ascertain our position, till we found ourselves at noon off Cape Cockburn, 
our latitude by observation being 74° 58 ' 28". We were now enabled to de- 
termine the continuity of the land from that point to Graham Moore’s Bay, 
which, on its first discovery, we could not exactly ascertain on account of the 
distance at which we sailed from it. 
The ice to the southward, along which we continued to sail this day, was 
composed of floes remarkable for their extraordinary length and continuity, 
some of them not having a single break or crack for miles together, though 
their height above the sea was not generally more than twelve inches, and 
their surface as smooth and even as a bowling-green, forming, in both these 
respects, a striking contrast to the ice to which we had lately been accustomed 
more westerly. The outer edge of these floes, however, for about one 
hundred yards, was broken by the sea into innumerable small pieces, remaining 
so close that a boat would not penetrate them; a circumstance which I 
notice because it prevented my putting into execution a plan I had pro- 
posed of making some observations on the variation of the magnetic 
needle in this neighbourhood, there being every reason to suppose that 
>Ve should have found it to be 180°, or the south point of the needle 
turned directly to the North Pole of the earth, about the meridian of 100° 
West of Greenwich. The wind being to the southward of west, which 
