288 
VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
Having made the necessary observations, we went to the tents to take 
leave of our new acquaintance. The old man seemed quite fatigued with 
the day’s exertions, but his eyes sparkled with delight, and we thought with 
gratitude too, on being presented with another brass kettle, to add to the 
stores with which we had already enriched him. He seemed to understand 
us when we shook him by the hand ; the whole group watched us in silence, 
as we went into the boat, and, as soon as we had rowed a few hundred yards 
from the beach, quietly retired to their tents. 
The latitude observed upon Observation Island was 70° 21' 57", its longi- 
tude by chronometers being 68° 28' 33", and the variation of the magnetic 
needle 80° 59' 17" Westerly. The tide rose two feet from half-past nine till 
half-past twelve. In crossing over to the main land, we then found a con- 
siderable ripple on the water, as if occasioned by a tide setting against 
the wind to the westward, which was, therefore, probably the flood. During 
the time that we were on shore at the tents, the tide was falling, so that 
the time of high-water this day (being new moon) would appear to be 
between half-past twelve and half-past one o’clock. Having walked some 
distance up the shore of the north branch, we thought that the water did not 
taste very salt ; the specific gravity of that taken up near the ship at noon 
was 1.0223 at the temperature of 52°, and in the evening, a second experiment 
gave precisely the same result. In the particular chart of this fine inlet, 
which is annexed, it is not pretended to give an accurate delineation of the 
numerous islands and openings which it contains, our distance from the upper 
part of the inlet being too great, and our time too limited for this purpose. 
In stretching across from side to side, the water was found so deep, close 
to the shores, that no anchorage could be discovered, and in the middle 
was a depth of one hundred and fifty to two hundred fathoms ; nothing like 
a rock or danger of any kind could be perceived, as far as the ships proceeded. 
We bore up to run out of the inlet, at six P.M., passing between Observa- 
tion Island and another immediately to the northward of it, and having no 
bottom with the hand-leads in mid-channel ; off the north end of Observation 
Island, however, I found the water to shoal for about a hundred yards, and 
then deepen at once. Soon after we had cleared the inlet, the wind backed 
to the southward ; we, therefore, stood off to the eastward, and hove-to till 
daydight. The land to the southward of this inlet becomes low next the sea, 
in the same manner as that to the northward of it, and a similar regularity in 
the decrease of the soundings is observed in standing in-shore ; we had from 
