all during this season. We therefore bore up, and ran again to the south- ward, where the sea by this time had become rather more clear along the lee margin of a large ‘field’ of ice, extending far to the westward[1]. The ice in this neighbourhood was covered with innumerable hummocks, and the ‘floes’ were from seven to ten feet in thickness.
“It may here be remarked, as a fact not altogether unworthy of notice, that, from the time of our entering Sir James Lancaster’s Sound, till we l»ad passed the meridian of 92°, near which the northern shore of Barrow’s Strait ceases to be continuous, the wind had invariably blown in a direction nearly due east or due west, being that of the shores of the strait. “When, therefore, we experienced to-day, for the first time, a fresh breeze blowing steadily from the northward, or directly off the land, we were willing, though, perhaps, without much reason, to construe this circumstance into an additional indication of the shores near which we were now sailing being altogether composed of islands, down the channels between which the wind blew, and that no obstruction from continued land was any longer to be apprehended.
“After various unsuccessful attempts to get through the ice which now lay in our way, we were at length so fortunate as to accomplish this object by ‘boring’ through several heavy ‘streams’, which occasioned the ships to receive several severe shocks: and, at half an hour before midnight, we were enabled to pursue our course to the westward,” the messes of ice being so much separated as to allow the ships to sail among them.
August 2th. – “At 7 a.m., we saw land to the northward of us, at the distance of nine or ten miles, which subsequently proved to be an island, and was named after Viscount Lowther.” Some high and bold land to the southward, terminated to the eastward by a bluff headland, was named after Mr. Walker of the Hydrographical Office. “We here obtained soundings in 63 fathoms.
“It now became evident that all the land around us consisted of islands, and the comparative shoalness of the water made great caution necessary in proceeding, surrounded as we were by both land and ice in almost every direction.” Two of these islands were named after Sir Humphrey Davy and Earl Bathurst.
August 25th. – “It was encouraging to find, while advancing to the westward as fast as an unfavorable wind would permit, that, although the- ↑ When a sheet of ice is too extensive to be seen over from a ship’s mast-head, it is called a “field.”
