OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
33 
ance of any land to the westward of us for four or five points of the compass. 
The colour of the water having become rather lighter, we hove-to at this 
time for the Griper, and obtained soundings in one hundred and fifty fathoms 
on a muddy bottom. The wind increased so much as to make it necessary 
to close-reef the sails, and to get the top-gallant yards down, and there was 
a breaking sea from the eastward. A great number of whales were seen in 
the course of this day’s run. 
Having made the ship snug, so as to be in readiness to round to, should Wed. 4. 
the land be seen a-head, and the Griper having come up within a few miles 
of us, we again bore up at one A.M. At half-past three, Lieutenant Beechey, 
who had relieved me on deck, discovered from the crow’s-nest, a reef of 
rocks, in-shore of us to the northward, on which the sea was breaking. 
These breakers appeared to lie directly off a cape, which we named after 
IRear- Admiral Joseph Bullen, and which lies immediately to the eastward 
of an inlet, that I named Brooking Cuming Inlet. As the sea had now 
become high, and the water appeared discoloured at some distance without 
the breakers, the Hecla was immediately rounded to, for the purpose of 
sounding ; we could find no bottom with fifty fathoms of line, but the Griper 
coming up shortly after, obtained soundings in seventy-five fathoms, on a 
bottom of sand and mud. We here met with innumerable loose masses of 
ice, upon which the sea was constantly breaking, in a manner so much 
resembling the breakers on shoals, as to make it a matter of some little 
uncertainty at the time, whether those of which I have spoken above, might 
not also have been caused by ice. It is possible, therefore, that shoal water 
may not be found to exist in this place ; but I thought it right to mark the 
spot on the chart to warn future navigators when approaching this part of the 
coast. That there is something out of the common way in this neighbour- 
hood, appears, however, more than probable, from the soundings obtained 
by the Griper, which are much less than we found them in any other part of 
the Sound at the same distance from land. 
At seven A.M., there being less sea, and no appearance of broken or dis- 
coloured water, we again bore away to the westward, the Griper having 
joined us about the meridian of 85°, which had been appointed as our place 
of rendezvous. Since the preceding evening, a thick haze had been hanging 
over the horizon to the southward, which prevented our seeing the land in 
that direction, to the westward of 87°, while the whole of the northern shore, 
though, as it afterwards proved, at a greater distance from us, was distinctly 
F 
