ually sinking for some time.

The funeral of the deceased being performed, we immediately commenced
landing the casks and filling water; but, notwithstanding the large
streams which, a short time before, had been running into the harbour,
we could hardly obtain enough for our purpose by sinking a cask with
holes in it. This work, together with the entire restowage of all the
holds, occupied the whole of the 29th and 30th, during which time
Lieutenant Sherer was employed in completing the survey of the harbour,
more especially the soundings, which the presence of the ice had before
prevented. These arrangements had just been completed, when the
northeasterly wind died away, and was succeeded, on the morning of the
31st, by a light air from the northwest. As soon as we had sent to
ascertain that the sea was clear of ice on the outside, and that the
breeze which blew in the harbour was the true one, we weighed and stood
out, and before noon had cleared the shoals at the entrance.

Finding the wind at northwest in Prince Regent's Inlet, we were barely
able to lie along the eastern coast. As the breeze freshened in the
course of the day, a great deal of loose ice, in extensive streams and
patches, came drifting down from the Leopold Islands, occasioning us
some trouble in picking our way to the northward. By carrying a press of
sail, however, we were enabled, towards night, to get into clearer
water, and by four A.M. on the 1st of September, having beat to windward
of a compact body of ice which had fixed itself on the lee shore about
Cape York, we soon came into a perfectly open sea in Barrow's Strait,
and were enabled to bear away to the eastward. We now considered
ourselves fortunate in having got out of harbour when we did, as the ice
would probably have filled up every inlet on that shore in a few hours
after we left it.

Being again favoured with a fair wind, we now stretched to the eastward,
still in an open sea; and our curiosity was particularly excited to see
the present situation of the ice in the middle of Baffin's Bay, and to
compare it with that in 1824. This comparison we were enabled to make
the more fairly, because the season at which we might expect to come to
it coincided, within three or four days, with that in which we left it
the preceding year. The temperature of the sea-water now increased to
38 deg. soon after leaving the Sound, where it had generally been from
33 deg. to 35 deg., whereas at the sa