A.M. to gain the main land, with the intention
of determining the extent of the inlet by walking up its southern bank.
After an hour's good travelling, we landed at eight A.M., and had
scarcely done so when we found ourselves at the very entrance, being
exactly opposite the place from which Mr. Richards and myself had
obtained the first view of the inlet. The patch of ice on which we had
been walking, and which was about three miles long, proved the only
remains of last year's formation; so forcibly had nature struggled to
get rid of this before the commencement of a fresh winter.

Walking quickly to the westward along this shore, which afforded
excellent travelling, we soon perceived that our business was at an end,
the inlet terminating a very short distance beyond where I had first
traced it, the apparent turn to the northward being only that of a
shallow bay.

Having thus completed our object, we set out on our return, and reached
the boat at three P.M., after a walk of twenty miles. The weather
fortunately remaining extremely mild, no young ice was formed to
obstruct our way, and we arrived on board at noon the following day,
after an examination peculiarly satisfactory, inasmuch as it proved the
non-existence of _any_ water communication with the Polar Sea, however
small and unfit for the navigation of ships, to the southward of the
Strait of the Fury and Hecla.

I found from Captain Lyon on my return, that, in consequence of some ice
coming in near the ships, he had shifted them round the point into the
berths-where it was my intention to place them during the winter; where
they now lay in from eleven to fourteen fathoms, at the distance of
three cables' length from the shore.

It was not till the afternoon of the 30th that the whole was completed,
and the Fury placed in the best berth for the winter that circumstances
would permit. An early release in the spring could here be scarcely
expected, nor, indeed, did the nature of the ice about us, independently
of situation, allow us to hope for it; but both these unfavourable
circumstances had been brought about by a contingency which no human
power or judgment could have obviated, and at which, therefore, it would
have been unreasonable, as well as useless, to repine. We lay here in
rather less than five fathoms, on a muddy bottom, at the distance of one
cable's length from the eastern shore of the bay.

The whole length of the canal we had sawed through was