hundred feet above the level of the sea, and with a small low
islet lying off its northern end. This island, being the northernmost
known land in the world, naturally excited much of our curiosity; and
bleak, and barren, and rugged as it is, one could not help gazing at it
with intense interest.

At midnight on the 14th we had reached the latitude 81 deg.5'32" Our
longitude by chronometers at this time was 19 deg. 34' E., Little Table
Island bearing S. 26 deg. E. (true), distant six or seven leagues, and
Walden Island S. 4 deg. E.[019] The depth of water was ninety-seven
fathoms, on a bottom of greenish mud; and the temperature at ninety-five
fathoms, by Six's thermometer, was 29.8 deg., that at the surface being
31 deg., and of the air 28 deg. All that could here be seen to the
northward was loose drift-ice. To the northeast it was particularly
open, and I have no doubt that we might have gone many miles farther in
that direction, had it not been a much more important object to keep the
ship free than to push her to the northward.

We now stood back again to the southward, in order again to examine the
coast wherever we could approach it; but found, on the 15th, that none
of the land was at all accessible, the wind having got round to the
W.N.W., and loaded all the shores with drift-ice.

Walden Island being the first part clear of the loose ice, we stretched
in for it on the 16th, and, when within two miles, observed that about
half that space was occupied by land-ice, even on its northwestern side,
which was the only accessible one, the rest being wholly enclosed by it.
However, being desirous of obtaining a better view than our crow's-nest
commanded, and also of depositing here a small quantity of provisions,
I left the ship at one P.M., accompanied by Lieutenant Foster in a
second boat, and, landing upon the ice, walked over about three quarters
of a mile of high and rugged hummocks to the shore. Ascending two or
three hundred feet, we had a clear and extensive view of the Seven
Islands, and of some land far beyond them to the eastward; and the whole
sea was covered with one unbroken land-floe, attached to all the shores
extending from the island where we stood, and which formed an abutment
for it each way along the land as far as the eye could reach. After this
discouraging prospect, which wholly destroyed every hope of finding a
harbour among the Seven Islands, we returned to the place where the men
had deposi