POST-CAPTAINS OF 1821.
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large bergs very much washed by the sea; and the weather being remarkably clear, so as to enable us to run with perfect safety, we were, by midnight, in a great measure relieved from our anxiety respecting the supposed continuity of land at the bottom of this magnificent inlet, having reached the longitude of 83° 12', where the two shores are still above thirteen leagues apart, without the slightest appearance of any land to the westward of us for four or five points of the compass. A great number of whales were seen in the course of this day’s run.”
August 4th. “At noon, being in lat. 74° 15' 53" N , long., by chronometers, 86° 30' 30", we were near two openings, of which the easternmost was named Burnet Inlet, and the other Stratton Inlet. The land between them had very much the appearance of an island. Sounded, and found no bottom with 170 fathoms of line; the water of a dirty light green colour. We soon after discovered a cape (Fellfoot), which appeared to form the termination of this coast; and as the haze which prevailed to the southward prevented our seeing any land in that quarter, and the sea was literally as free from ice as any part of the Atlantic, we began to flatter ourselves that we had fairly entered the Polar Sea, and some of the most sanguine among us had even calculated the bearing and distance of Icy Cape, as a matter of no very difficult or improbable accomplishment. This pleasing prospect was rendered the more flattering by the sea having, as we thought, regained the usual oceanic colour, and by a long swell which was rolling in from the southward and eastward. At 6 p.m., however, land was reported to be seen a-head. The vexation and anxiety produced on every countenance was but too visible, until, on a nearer approach, it was found to be only an island, of no very great extent, and that, on each side of it, the horizon still appeared clear for several points of the compass. More land was also discovered beyond Cape Fellfoot, immediately to the westward of which lies a deep and broad bay, which I named after my friend, Mr. Maxwell. At 8 p.m. we came to some ice of no great breadth or thickness, extending several miles in a direction nearly parallel to our course; and as we could see clear water over it to the southward, I was for some time in the hope, that it would prove a detached ‘stream,’ from which no obstruction to our progress westerly was to be apprehended. At twenty minutes past 10, however, we perceived that the ice, along which we had been sailing for the last two hours, was joined, at the distance of half a mile to the westward of us, to a compact and impenetrable body of ‘floes’[1] which lay across the
- ↑ A “floe” is an extensive sheet of ice, the limits of which can be distinguished from a ship’s mast-head.
