and variable winds, and thick falling snow defeated my intentions of examination, and compelled us to keep off to the eastward the whole day, although we occasionally got glimpses of the land between the snow showers.
About noon it fell perfectly calm; we were fortunate in being in a space less encumbered by ice than usual. Commander Crozier took advantage of the opportunity of increasing his supply of fresh water by collecting some of the fragments of bergs about us, not without great hazard to their boats, during so much swell, but fortunately without any serious accident. We sounded in one hundred and eighty fathoms, in greenish clay and coral; we inferred from the shallowness of the water that all the bergs in sight were aground, as none of them were less than one hundred and sixty feet high.
Early in the morning a steady breeze blew from Feb. 24.the westward, which increased so much in strength as it veered to the north-west at noon, as to reduce us to treble-reefed topsails, reefed foresail, and staysails: we had been endeavouring all the day to close the land, and at 4 p.m., when preparing to run to leeward of what we considered to be a monstrous iceberg, it became evident to us that it formed a part of a body of ice which we could distinctly trace as a continuous mass descending from near the tops of the mountains several miles into the sea, and terminated by stupendous cliffs; a deep bay was formed in these extraordinary cliffs