OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
37 
along the edge of the ice, between which and the eastern shore, there was 1819. 
a broad and open channel, with the intention of seeking, in a lower latitudes 
a clearer passage to the westward than that which we had just been obliged 
to abandon lying between Prince Leopold’s Isles, and Maxwell’s Bay. The 
headland, which forms the western point of the entrance into this inlet, was 
honoured by the name of Cape Clarence, after His Royal Highness the 
Duke of Clarence ; and another, to the south-eastward of this, was named 
after Sir Robert Seppings, one of the Surveyors of His Majesty’s navy. 
Since the time we first entered Sir James Lancaster’s Sound, the sluggish- 
ness of the compasses, as well as the amount of their irregularity produced 
by the attraction of the ship’s iron, had been found very rapidly, though 
uniformly, to increase, as we proceeded to the westward ; so much, indeed, 
that, for the last two days, we had been under the necessity of giving up 
altogether the usual observations for determining the variation of the needle 
on board the ships. This irregularity became more and more obvious as we 
now advanced to the southward. The rough magnetic bearing of the sun 
at noon, or at midnight, or when on the prime vertical, as compared 
with its true azimuth, w&s sufficient to render this increasing inefficiency 
of the compass quite apparent. For example, at noon this day, while we 
were observing the meridian altitude, the bearing of the sun was two points 
on the Hecla’s larboard bow, and consequently her true course was about 
S.S.W. The binnacle and azimuth compasses at the same time agreed in 
shewing N.N.W. |W., making the variation to be allowed on that course, 
eleven points and-a-half westerly, corresponding nearly with an azimuth taken 
on the following morning, which gave 137° 12'. It was evident, therefore, 
that a very material change had taken place in the dip, or the variation, or 
in both these phenomena, since we had last an opportunity of obtaining 
observations upon them ; which rendered it not improbable that we were 
now making a very near approach to the magnetic pole. This supposition 
was further strengthened on the morning of the 7th; when, having de- Sat. 7. 
creased our latitude to about 73°, we found that no alteration whatever in the 
absolute course on which the Hecla was steering, produced a change of 
more than three or four points in the direction indicated by the compass, 
which continued uniformly from N.N.E. to N.N.W., according as the ship’s 
head was placed on one side or the other of the magnetic meridian. We 
now, therefore, witnessed, for the first time, the curious phenomenon of the 
directive power of the needle becoming so weak as to be completely over- 
