intercourse with us, that I lost the opportunity. Though they
have exchanged articles in barter for many years, it is not known
whether they are from the Labrador shore on a summer excursion for
killing seals, and the whale fishery, or from the East main coast,
where they return and winter.

The highest point of latitude we reached in our course, was 62 deg.
44'--longitude 74 deg. 16', and when off Cape Digges we parted company with
the Prince of Wales, as bound to James's Bay. We stood on direct for
York Factory, and when about fifty miles from Cary Swan's Nest, the
chief mate pointed out to me a polar bear, with her two cubs swimming
towards the ship. He immediately ordered the jolly-boat to be lowered,
and asked me to accompany him in the attempt to kill her. Some axes
were put into the boat, in case the ferocious animal should approach us
in the attack; and the sailors pulled away in the direction she was
swimming. At the first shot, when within about one hundred yards, she
growled tremendously, and immediately made for the boat; but having the
advantage in rowing faster than she could swim, our guns were reloaded
till she was killed, and one of the cubs also accidentally, from
swimming close to the mother; the other got upon the floating carcase,
and was towed to the side of the ship, when a noose was put around its
neck, and it was hauled on board for the captain to take with him
alive, on his return to England.

AUGUST 3.--We fell in with a great deal of floating ice, the weather
was very foggy, and the thermometer at freezing point. The ship
occasionally received some heavy blows, and with difficulty made way
along a vein of water. On the 5th we were completely blocked in with
ice, and nothing was to be seen in every part of the horizon, but one
vast mass, as a barrier to our proceeding. It was a terrific, and
sublime spectacle; and the human mind cannot conceive any thing more
awful, than the destruction of a ship, by the meeting of two enormous
fields of ice, advancing against each other at the rate of several
miles an hour. "It may easily be imagined," says Captain Scoresby,
"that the strongest ship can no more withstand the shock of the contact
of two fields, than a sheet of paper can stop a musket-ball. Numbers of
vessels since the establishment of the Whale Fishery have been thus
destroyed. Some have been thrown upon the ice. Some have had their
hulls completely thrown open, and others have been buried be