hould the land be seen ahead, and the Griper having come up
within a few miles of us, we again bore up at one A.M., the 4th.
At half past three, Lieutenant Beechey, who had relieved me on
deck, discovered from the crow's-nest a reef of rocks, in-shore of
us to the northward, on which the sea was breaking. The cliffs on
this part of the coast present a singular appearance, being
stratified horizontally, and having a number of regular projecting
masses of rock, broad at the bottom, and coming to a point at the
top, resembling so many buttresses, raised by art at equal
intervals.

After lying-to for an hour, we again bore up to the westward, and
soon after discovered a cape, afterward named by Captain Sabine,
CAPE FELLFOOT, which appeared to form the termination of this
coast; and as the haze, which still prevailed to the south,
prevented our seeing any land in that quarter, and the sea was
literally as free from ice as any part of the Atlantic, we began
to flatter ourselves that we had fairly entered the Polar Sea, and
some of the most sanguine among us had even calculated the bearing
and distance of Icy Cape, as a matter of no very difficult or
improbable accomplishment. This pleasing prospect was rendered the
more flattering by the sea having, as we thought, regained the
usual oceanic colour, and by a long swell which was rolling in
from the southward and eastward. At six P.M., however, land was
reported to be seen ahead. The vexation and anxiety produced on
every countenance by such a report were but too visible, until, on
a nearer approach, it was found to be only an island, of no very
large extent, and that, on each side of it, the horizon still
appeared clear for several points of the compass. At eight P.M. we
came to some ice of no great breadth or thickness, extending
several miles in a direction nearly parallel to our course; and as
we could see clear water over it to the southward, I was for some
time in the hope that it would prove a detached stream, from which
no obstruction to our progress westerly was to be apprehended. At
twenty minutes past ten, however, the weather having become hazy
and the wind light, we perceived that the ice, along which we had
been sailing for the last two hours, was joined, at the distance
of half a mile to the westward of us, to a compact and impenetrable
body of floes, which lay across the whole breadth of the strait,
formed by the island and the western point of Maxwell Bay. We