OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
237 
pounds of venison, and with the information of having discovered land from 1820 . 
W.S.W. to S.S.W. at a great distance, and the loom of it also extending as 
far round to the eastward as a S.E. bearing. Lieutenant Beechey con- 
sidered the general distance of the land to be from forty to fifty miles, the 
nearest being about a S.S.W. bearing, and three capes could be plainly dis- 
tinguished with a glass. The report of the state of the ice was by no means 
favourable to our hopes, the sea being covered with floes as far as the eye 
could reach, and the space between them so filled with broken ice, or the 
floes so closely joined, that scarcely a “ hole” of water was to be seen. 
In the afternoon, a man from each mess was sent on shore to pick sorrel, 
which was here remarkably fine and large, as well as more acid than any we 
had lately met with. The shelter from the northerly winds, afforded by the 
high land on this part of the coast, together with its southern aspect, renders 
the vegetation here immediately next the sea much more luxuriant than in 
most parts of Melville Island which we visited ; and a considerable addition 
was made to our collection of plants, of which an account is given in 
another place. 
The easterly breeze died away in the course of the day, and at three 
P.M., was succeeded by a light air from the opposite quarter ; and as this 
freshened up a little, the loose ice began to drift into our bight, and 
that on the eastern side of the point to drive off. It became expedient, 
therefore, immediately to shift the ship round the point, where she was made 
fast in four fathoms abaft, and seventeen feet forward, close alongside the 
usual ledge of submarine ice, which touched her about seven feet under 
water, and which, having few of the heavy masses aground upon it, 
would, probably, have allowed her to be pushed over it, had a heavy 
pressure occurred from without. It was the more necessary to moor the ship 
in some such situation, as we found from six to seven fathoms’ water, by 
dropping the hand-lead down close to her bow and quarter on the outer 
side. 
We had scarcely secured the ship, when the wind once more shifted to 
the eastward, and the loose ice almost immediately began to move back in 
the opposite direction. The wind being, however, rather off the land than 
otherwise, I preferred remaining in our present situation, on account of 
the safer beach which we found here ; and as there was, in other respects, 
little or no choice betwixt the two places, unless the wind came more on the 
land. At half-past ten P.M.,the loose ice began to fill up the small space which 
