coal were brought in
by the parties who had traversed the island in different
directions. Our sportsmen were by no means successful, having seen
only two deer, which were too wild to allow them to get near them.
The dung of these animals, however, as well as that of the
musk-ox, was very abundant, especially in those places where the
moss was most luxuriant; every here and there we came to a spot of
this kind, consisting of one or two acres of ground, covered with
a rich vegetation, which was evidently the feeding-place of those
animals, there being quantities of their hair and wool lying
scattered about. Several heads of the musk-ox were picked up, and
one of the Hecla's seamen brought to the boat a narwhal's horn,
which he found on a hill more than a mile from the sea, and which
must have been carried thither by Esquimaux or by bears: three or
four brace of ptarmigan were killed, and these were the only
supply of this kind which we obtained. We found no indication of
this part of the island having been inhabited, unless the
narwhal's horn be considered as such.

The wind continued light and variable till half past eight A.M. on
the 3d, when a breeze from the northward once more enabled us to
make some progress. I was the more anxious to do so from having
perceived that the main ice had, for the last twenty-four hours,
been gradually, though slowly, closing on the shore, thereby
contracting the scarcely navigable channel in which we were
sailing. The land which formed our western extreme was a low
point, five miles to the westward of our place of observation the
preceding day, which I named Point Ross, and the ice had already
approached this point so much that there was considerable doubt
whether any passage could be found between them. We had scarcely
cleared the point when the wind failed us, and the boats were
immediately sent ahead to tow, but a breeze springing up shortly
after from the westward, obliged us to have recourse to another
method of gaining ground, which we had not hitherto practised:
this was by using small anchors and whale-lines as warps, by which
means we made great progress, till, at forty minutes after noon,
we were favoured by a fresh breeze, which soon took us into an
open space of clear water to the northward and westward. A little
to the westward of Point Ross there was a barrier of ice, composed
of heavy masses firmly fixed to the ground at nearly regular
intervals for about a mile, in a