OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
263 
made this shore a lee one, did not allow me to land on Bathurst Island for 
this purpose. 
The weather was again so thick with snow in the afternoon, that we were 
once more obliged to sail round all the bays in the ice, instead of running 
from point to point, in order to leave no part of it unexamined ; and, on its 
clearing up in the evening, we found that the ice was leading us to the 
northward of Garrett Island, the passage to the southward of it, through 
which we had sailed to the westward the preceding year, being now com- 
pletely blocked up by floes, which did not appear to have been detached 
from the island during this season. We had here occasion to notice, in a 
very striking degree, the deception occasioned by snow lying upon the land, 
in judging of its distance ; this, indeed, is much more remarkable in these seas 
than in any other, when any part of the intermediate space is occupied by floes 
of ice, the whiteness of which mingles so imperceptibly with that of the snow 
upon the land, that it is impossible, from the total absence of any shadow, 
to tell where one ends and the other commences. Such, indeed, was the 
illusion this evening, with respect to Garrett Island, which was completely 
covered with snow, that, although we were sailing at the distance of only 
four or five miles from it, we should scarcely have been aware that any 
land was in that direction, had we not previously surveyed these islands, and 
been running with the chart before us. 
In passing between Garrett and Bathurst Islands, at the distance of five 
miles from the former, we could find no bottom with thirty-five to fifty 
fathoms of line ; and when its centre bore S.b.W. | W. at the same distance, 
another island was discovered to the northward, which had not before been 
seen, and which I named after my friend and former commander, Captain 
Thomas Baker, of the Royal Navy. The eastern part of Bathurst Island was 
now observed to extend farther to the N.N.E. than we had before been 
enabled to see it, terminating by a point of land, called Cape Capel, out of 
respect to the Honourable Captain Thomas Bladen Capel, of the Royal 
Navy. 
We continued to run along the edge of the ice to the eastward, till half- 
past ten P.M., when more land being discovered a-head, of the extent and 
position of which we had no previous knowledge, and, the night growing 
dark, the ships were hove-to with their heads to the northward and westward, 
in which direction there was a space of clear water several miles in extent, 
being in ninety fathoms, on a bottom of soft mud. 
1820 . 
August. 
