OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
295 
square pieces of floe-ice, which had evidently been cut out of a dock by 1820. 
some of the whalers in the course of the present season. The ships were 
secured to a berg dt six P.M., and the wind having freshened up to a gale 
from the N.W.b.N., with some swell, we were much annoyed during the 
night by the ice which drifted under the lee of it, and on which the ships 
were constantly striking with a heavy shock, such as no others could long 
have withstood. This danger is avoided by ships lying very close under the 
lee of a berg, but a much greater is thereby incurred from the risk of the 
berg’s upsetting ; a circumstance which is always to be apprehended in a 
swell, and which must be attended with certain destruction to a ship moored 
very near to it. 
At day-light on the 19th, we cast off from the berg, and occupied the whole Tues. 19. 
of the day in unsuccessful attempts to get through the ice in to the land, of 
which we could only obtain a very distant glimpse, bearing from S. 24° W. to 
S. 69° W. By hauling to the north-eastward, we got into sufficiently clear 
water to enable me to keep the ships under way during the night; but, the 
wind falling light, great attention was requisite in avoiding the icebergs, which 
were numerous, and of large dimensions. 
The weather was so thick with snow on the 20th, that we could make no Wed. 20. 
progress. At noon, being in latitude 68° 12' 11", and longitude 60° 50' 19", 
no soundings could be obtained with seven hundred and seventy fathoms of 
line. The temperature of the sea, at the depth of three hundred and eigh- 
teen fathoms, was 33°, that of the surface being 32°, and of the air 31°|, 
On the following day we sounded in two hundred fathoms, on a bottom of Thur. 21. 
very fine sand and broken shells, and found the temperature of some water 
brought up from that depth in Dr. Marcet’s bottle, to be 33°j ; that of the air 
at the same time was 30°, and of the surface-water 34°|, being the warmest 
we had observed for a considerable time. 
On the 23d, having run to the southward nearly as far as the latitude of Sat, 23. 
Mount Raleigh, without being able to approach the land, the trending of the 
ice flattered us for some time with the hope of getting in with the coast ; but 
at two P.M. we came to a compact and impenetrable body of it, over which 
we could not see any clear water from the mast-head, and which obliged us 
to haul off to the south-eastward. 
On the 24th and 25th we continued our progress to the southward, but 
without any better success in approaching, or even getting sight of, the land ; 
the ice being as close and compact as when we sailed along the margin of it 
