OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 49 
been our object to do so, and time would have permitted. A remarkable 
headland, on the western side, I. named after Sir William Herschel. 
At six P.M., when we had passed to the westward of Maxwell Bay, the 
wind failed us, and the opportunity was immediately taken to try the current 
by mooring the small boat to the bottom in one hundred and fifty fathoms. 
The tide was found to set W. | N., at the rate of a quarter of a mile per 
hour ; and at nine o’clock, when we tried it again in a similar manner, there 
was still a slight stream perceptible, setting in the same direction. The mud 
and small black stones, brought up from the bottom, consisted entirely of 
limestone, effervescing strongly with an acid. 
On the 21st we had nothing to impede our progress but the want of wind, 
the great opening, through which we had hitherto proceeded from Baffin’s Bay ? 
being now so perfectly clear of ice, that it was almost impossible to believe it to 
be the same part of the sea, which, but a day or two before, had been completely 
covered with floes to the utmost extent of our view. In the forenoon, being 
off a headland, which was named after Captain Thomas Hurd, Hydrographer 
to the Admiralty, we picked up a small piece of wood, which appeared to have 
been the end of a boat’s yard, and which caused sundry amusing speculations 
among our gentlemen ; some of whom had just come to the very natural 
conclusion, that a ship had been here before us, and that, therefore, we were 
not entitled to the honour of the first discovery of that part of the sea on 
which we were now sailing ; when a stop was suddenly put to this and other 
ingenious inductions by the information of one of the seamen, that he had 
dropped it out of his boat a fortnight before. I could not get him to recollect 
exactly the day on which it had been so dropped, but what he stated was suf- 
ficient to convince me, that we were not at that time more than ten or twelve 
leagues from our present situation ; perhaps not half so much ; and that, 
therefore, here was no current setting constantly in any one direction. A 
bay, to the northward and westward of Cape Hurd, was called Rigby 
Bay. 
At nine P.M., the wind being light from the northward, with hazy 
weather, and some clouds, the electrometer chain was hoisted up to the 
masthead ; but no sensible effect was produced, either upon the pith-balls or 
the gold-leaf. A thick fog came on at night, which, together with the 
lightness of the wind, and the caution necessary in navigating an unknown 
sea under such circumstances, rendered our progress to the westward ex- 
tremely slow, though we had fortunately no ice to obstruct us. The 
H 
1819. 
August. 
Sat. 21. 
