as succeeded by a light air from the opposite quarter;
and as this freshened up a little, the loose ice began to drift
into our bight, and that on the eastern side of the point to drive
off. It became expedient, therefore, immediately to shift the ship
round the point, where she was made fast in four fathoms abaft and
seventeen feet forward, close alongside the usual ledge of
submarine ice, which touched her about seven feet under water, and
which, having few of the heavy masses aground upon it, would
probably have allowed her to be pushed over it had a heavy
pressure occurred from without. It was the more necessary to moor
the ship in some such situation, as we found from six to seven
fathoms water by dropping the hand-lead down close to her bow and
quarter on the outer side.

Several heavy pieces of floes drove close past us, not less than
ten or fifteen feet in thickness, but they were fortunately
stopped by a point of land without coming in upon us. At eleven
o'clock, however, a mass of this kind, being about half an acre in
extent, drove in, and gave the ship a considerable "nip" between
it and the land ice, and then grazed past her to the westward. I
now directed the rudder to be unhung, and the ship to be swung
with her head to the eastward, so that the bow, being the
strongest part, might receive the first and heaviest pressure.

The ice did not disturb us again till five A.M. on the 8th, when
another floe-piece came in and gave the ship a heavy rub, and then
went past, after which it continued slack about us for several
hours. Everything was so quiet at nine o'clock as to induce me to
venture up the hill abreast of us, in order to have a view of the
newly-discovered land to the southwest, which, indeed, I had seen
indistinctly and much refracted from the Hecla's deck in the
morning. This land, which extends beyond the 117th degree of west
longitude, and is the most western yet discovered in the Polar Sea
to the northward of the American Continent, was honoured with the
name of BANKS'S LAND, out of respect to the late venerable and
worthy president of the Royal Society.

On the morning of the 9th a musk-ox came down to graze on the
beach near the ships. A party was despatched in pursuit, and,
having hemmed him in under the hill, which was too steep for him
to ascend, succeeded in killing him. When first brought on board,
the inside of this animal, which was a male, smelled very strong
of musk, of which the