ry
ancient date, and shot several birds--a seasonable increase to our
stock for table-consumption. One of the sportsmen assured me that, in
spite of the increased number of glaciers around us, and other
appearances of a more severe climate than we had been in the habit of
seeing in Barrow's Strait, he was of opinion that there was much more
vegetation in our neighbourhood than in the more southern latitude of
Cornwallis Island. The specimens of plants brought off in the boat,
such as poppies, saxifrage, and moss, were all finer than we had seen
elsewhere; and reindeer horns, near the Esquimaux ruins, showed that
these animals were to be found.

The island was a mass of gray-coloured granite, with some dark masses
of ferruginous-coloured rock intermixed, the whole much broken and rent
by the agency of frost and water.

Monday, the 18th of August, we proceeded along the northern shore,
towards another entrance which had shown itself on the north side of
Leopold Island,--the Jones's Sound of the old charts,--which we now
proved not to have been blocked up by either land or glaciers.

The land about Cape Hardwicke was little else, in my opinion, than a
group of islands,--an impression in which I became the more confirmed
when the ice obliged us to strike off directly to the eastward; and
Cape Clarence stood out bold and clear, with a midnight sun behind it:
and the light streamed through the different ice-choked channels
between Capes Hardwicke and Clarence, throwing up the land, _where
there was land_, in strong and dark relief.

Beyond Cape Clarence I saw no symptom of land, nor did any one else
either. It is said to recede; very possibly it may; but as neither we,
nor the "Resolute" and "Assistance," (who all reached a higher latitude
than any discovery-ships have been since Baffin's memorable voyage,)
ever saw land north of Cape Clarence, I trust, for the sake of
geography, that the beautifully-indented line which now joins the land
about Smith's Sound to that of Clarence Head, in our charts, may be
altered into a dotted one, as denoting that the said coast exists
rather in the imagination of channel-closing voyagers than actually in
the north-west corner of Baffin's Bay.

A multitude of grounded icebergs showed a shoal, which appears to bar
the northern entrance to Jones's Sound; and, during the night, a sudden
gale from the north, together with high water in the tides, set them
all floating and dancing around us