78 
VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
1819 . situation, while the Jce remained quiet. I was the more induced to do so from 
the boldness of the beach, and the depth of the bay formed by the floe 
to which we were now secured, which circumstances seemed to render it 
■ more than probable, that the latter would take the ground long before the 
ships could come in contact with it. We saw to-day, for the first time, a herd 
of eight or nine animals, feeding near the beach, which, from their dark colour, 
we supposed to be musk-oxen; and the officers of the Griper killed two white 
hares ( Lepus Variabilis). The “young” or “bay” ice formed during the night 
in all the sheltered places about the floe, and particularly in the bight in 
which we were lying, to the thickness of three-quarters of an inch ; and the 
pools upon the floe were now almost entirely solid, affording the officers 
and men, during the time of our unavoidable detention, the usual healthy 
amusements of skating and sliding. 
Wed. 8. On the morning of the 8th, there being no prospect of any immediate 
alteration in the ice, I directed the boats to be sent on shore from both 
ships, to endeavour to procure some game, as well as to examine the pro- 
ductions of this part of the island. On going to the mast-head, shortly 
after the boats had been despatched, I found that the bight of ice in which 
the ships were lying was not one floe, but formed by the close junction 
of two, so that our situation was by no means so secure as I had sup- 
posed ; for this bight was so far from being a protection to us, in case of 
the ice driving on shore, that it would probably be the means of “ nipping” 
us between the floes which formed it. I therefore determined on imme- 
diately removing the ships in-shore, and went in a boat to look out for 
a place for that purpose, there being no alternative between this and our 
returning some distance to the eastward, into the larger space of clear 
water which we had there left behind us. I found that a heavy piece of ice 
aground in twelve fathoms, at the distance of three hundred yards from 
the beach, would suit our purpose for the Hecla, and another, in ten 
fathoms, still nearer in-shore, was selected for the Griper. These masses 
were from twenty to thirty feet above the sea, and each about the length 
of the respective ships. The beach in this neighbourhood was so lined 
with ice of this kind, that it would not have been easy for a ship to 
have gone on shore in any part, there being generally from four to seven 
fathoms on the outside of it, while the inner part of each mass was 
literally upon the beach at low water. Some of the detached masses, at 
a little distance from the shore, must have accumulated very considera- 
