OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
255 
rendered very apparent, the ships having received by far the heaviest shocks mo. 
which they experienced during the voyage. They continued, however, to 
drive till they were about three miles to the eastward of Cape Providence, 
where the low land commences; when finding that there was not any 
appearance of open water to the eastward or southward, and that we were 
now incurring the risk of being beset at sea, without a chance of making any 
farther progress, we hauled in for the largest piece of grounded ice we could 
see upon the beach, which we reached at six P.M., having performed six miles 
of the most difficult navigation I have ever known among ice. The Hecla 
was made fast in from eighteen to twenty feet water close to the beach, and 
the Griper in four fathoms, about half a mile to the westward of us. 
The situation in which the ships were now placed, when viewed in com- 
bination with the shortness of the remaining part of the season, and the 
period to which our resources of every kind could be extended, was such as 
to require a more than ordinary consideration, in order to determine upon 
the measures most proper to be pursued, for the advancement of the public 
service and the security of the ships and people committed to my charge. 
Judging from the close of the summer of 1819, it was reasonable to consider 
the 7th of September as the limit beyond which the navigation of this part of 
the Polar Sea could not be performed, with tolerable safety to the ships, or 
with any hope of further success. Impressed, however, with a strong sense 
of the efforts which it became us to make in the prosecution of our enterprise, 
I was induced to extend this limit to the 14th of September, before which 
day, on the preceding year, the winter might fairly be said to have set in. 
But even with this extension our prospect was not very encouraging : the 
direct distance to Icy Cape was between eight and nine hundred miles, 
while that which we had advanced towards it this season, fell short of sixty 
miles. 
I have already detailed the reasons which inclined me to believe, that 
there was little hope of making further progress to the westward in this 
latitude, and the grounds upon which I had determined to run along the edge 
of the ice to the eastward. Such, however, was the extreme difficulty with 
which we were enabled to navigate the ships in this, or any other, direction, 
that it had for many days been equally out of our power to effect this 
object. Indeed, we had experienced, during the first half of the navigable sea- 
son, such a continued series of vexations, disappointments and delays, accom- 
panied by such a constant state of danger to the ships, that I felt it would 
