ticle of
ice was to be seen, east or west, in Barrow's Strait, looking from the
highland on the east side of the anchorage, except between Griffith's
Island and Cape Martyr, where, some ten miles from the water, and in
the centre of a fixed floe, our unlucky squadron was jammed. Every
where else a clear sea spread itself, sparkling and breaking under a
fresh southerly breeze. Some individuals, who had visited Cape Hotham,
reported the water in Wellington Channel to have made up as high as
Barlow Inlet, beyond which, up to the north water, a floe still
intervened.

In default of Penny's arrival, I was much interested in a journey, upon
which Mr. John Stuart, surgeon of the "Lady Franklin," had been
despatched to follow the traces of some of Franklin's sledges, towards
Caswell's Tower, and to re-examine the traces found in 1850. The
sledge-tracts, which I have elsewhere alluded to, as existing on the
east side of "Erebus and Terror Bay," Mr. Stuart found, as we
conjectured, to have been those of some exploring party, sent from
Beechey Island to Caswell's Tower, in Radstock Bay; for at the base of
the said tower--a remarkable detached mass of limestone--two
carefully-constructed cairns were found, but no record in them; beyond
this, no farther signs of the missing navigators were found--nothing
whatever that could indicate a retreating party. That these cairns were
placed to attract attention, appears certain; the most conspicuous
points have been chosen for them; they are well and carefully built,
evidently not the mere work of an idle hour.

Failing Penny, and his intelligence, I contented myself with visiting
the neighbourhood of Assistance Harbour, and with observing the various
phenomena connected with the dissolution of the winter ice and snow
upon the land; and, of these, none was more interesting than the
breaking out of the ravines, which, having filled with snow during the
winter, had formed, during the previous fortnight, into large lakes of
water, sometimes of acres in extent; and then, in one moment, the
barriers which had pent up the ravines gave way, and, with irresistible
force, the waters rushed over every obstacle to the sea. Three large
ravines broke open whilst I was in Assistance Harbour, and the
thundering sound of the ice, water, and shingle, which swept down, and
soon cut a broad channel for many yards through the floe in the bay,
was a cheering tune to the gallant fellows who were looking forward