OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
241 
to be apprehended from the violent contact of one of these pieces was 1820. 
little less than that from a floe of ordinary size, such as occurs in Baffin’s 
Bay. This circumstance, also, very materially altered the character of the 
navigation on that part of the coast, for the loose pieces being most of 
them of infinitely greater bulk and weight in the water than either of our ships, 
the latter could no longer turn them out of their way, as usual, in sailing 
among this kind of ice, but were invariably stopped short in their progress, 
with a violent concussion, which nothing but their extraordinary strength 
could have enabled them to withstand. 
It now became evident, from the combined experience of this and the pre- 
ceding year, that there was something peculiar about the south-west extremity 
of Melville Island, which' made the icy sea there extremely unfavourable to 
navigation, and which seemed likely to bid defiance to all our efforts to 
proceed much farther to the westward in this parallel of latitude. We had 
arrived off it on the 17th of September, 1819, after long and heavy gales 
from the north-westward, by which alone the ice is ever opened on this 
coast, and found it, in unusually heavy and extensive fields, completely 
closing in with the land, a mile or two to the eastward of where we were 
now lying. We again arrived here in the early part of August, and though 
the rest of the navigation had been remarkably clear for the fifty miles 
between this and Winter Harbour, seeming to afford a presumptive proof, 
that the season was rather a favourable one than otherwise, the same ob- 
struction presented itself as before ; nor did there appear, from our late 
experience, a reasonable ground of hope, that any fortuitous circum- 
stance, such as an alteration in winds or currents, was likely to remove 
the formidable impediments which we had now to encounter. The in- 
creased dimensions of the ice hereabouts would not alone have created an 
insurmountable difficulty in the navigation, but that it was very naturally 
accompanied by a degree of closeness which seldom or never admitted 
an open space of clear water of sufficient size for a ship, or even a boat, to 
sail in. We had been lying near our present station with an easterly wind 
blowing fresh for thirty-six hours together ; and although this was consi- 
derably off the land, beyond the western point of the island now in sight, the 
ice had not, during the whole of that time, moved a single yard from the 
shore ; affording a proof that there was no space in which the ice was at liberty 
to move to the westward, and offering a single and a striking exception to our 
former experience. 
