FIRST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS 
81 
to obtain a complete view of his situation ; finding it impossible 
to proceed any further for some days, he ordered the observatory 
and instruments to be landed, and erected tents for the officers, 
who were appointed to attend them; during the stay here, the 
iceberg to which the ships were fastened, suddenly got afloat, 
and was carried with great rapidity towards the west, it soon 
however grounded again, and the Alexander remained attached 
to it. Notwithstanding the ships were surrounded with ice, the 
weather was hot and sultry, and it may be said that the crews 
throughout the whole of the voyage, had seldom reason to com¬ 
plain of cold, unless in falls of snow, with east winds or foggy 
weather, when the sun was obscured, and the ice settled on the 
rigging. 
On the 20th June the ships left Waygatt, and on the 22nd 
arrived at Four Island Point, where the whalers had already 
arrived, but which were now stopped by the ice. Capt. Ross 
landed here, and ascended a hill, but nothing except solid ice 
was to be seen in every direction. At this place there is a kind 
of Danish factory, and some wretched Esquimaux huts, all appa¬ 
rently deserted. There is also a burying place, at which the 
surgeon of a Greenland ship was seen procuring human skulls. 
The progress through the ice was now attended with the most 
imminent danger, and on one occasion when the ships were in 
a very dangerous passage, a light wind from the N. W. put the 
ice suddenly in motion; in spite of every exertion the Isabella 
was driven into sixteen feet water, and the Alexander was for 
a few minutes actually aground. 
By the assistance of the whalers, the ships were freed from 
their perilous situation, and for the remainder of the day contD 
nued fixed to an iceberg, together with about thirty other ships, 
all anchored within pistol shot of the shore. The following 
morning the ice was in motion, and about midnight they found 
themselves close to the land ice, near Unknown Island, so called 
by the Danes, where they moored, together with twenty other 
ships, to a field of ice. 
On Monday the 29th, Capt. Ross ordered the Esquimaux, John 
Sacheuse,to go on shore, and to communicate with the natives. He 
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