hat not less than one hundred and twenty persons had
taken up their residence here at the same time.

[Footnote: Crantz, i., 236. The Esquimaux on this part of the
coast use it only as sticks for trimming their lamps.]

The latitude observed on shore was 66 deg. 30' 58", being the first
observation we had yet obtained so near the Arctic Circle, but far
to the southward of that given by Captain Middleton.[*] The
longitude, by chronometers, was 86 deg. 30' 20"; the dip of the
magnetic needle, 88 deg. 07' 28"; and the variation, 48 deg. 32' 57"
westerly; being only a degree and a half less than that observed
by Middleton in 1742.

[Footnote: The difference amounts to about twenty miles. It is but
justice, however, to the memory of Captain Middleton to add, that
several miles of this error may have been occasioned by the
imperfection of nautical instruments in his day, combined with the
unavoidable inaccuracy of observations made by the horizon of the
sea when encumbered with much ice. On this latter account, as well
as from the extraordinary terrestrial refraction, no observation
can be here depended upon, unless made with an artificial
horizon.]

CHAPTER III.

Return to the Eastward through the Frozen Strait.--Discovery of
Hurd Channel.--Examined in a Boat.--Loss of the Fury's
Anchor.--Providential Escape of the Fury from Shipwreck.--Anchor
in Duckett Cove.--Farther Examination of the Coast by Boats and
Walking-parties.--Ships proceed through Hurd Channel.--Are drifted
by the Ice back to Southampton Island.--Unobstructed Run to the
Entrance of a large Inlet leading to the Northwestward.--Ships
made fast by Hawsers to the Rocks.--Farther Examination of the
Inlet commenced in the Boats.

Having now satisfactorily determined the non-existence of a
passage to the westward through Repulse Bay, to which point I was
particularly directed in my instructions, it now remained for me,
in compliance with my orders, to "keep along the line of this
coast to the northward, always examining every bend or inlet which
might appear likely to afford a practicable passage to the
westward." It was here, indeed, that our voyage, as regarded its
main object, may be said to have commenced, and we could not but
congratulate ourselves on having reached this point so early, and
especially at having passed, almost without impediment, the strait
to which, on nearly the same day[*] seventy-nine years before, so
forbidding a name had b