h of
the Coppermine, it was 48 degrees.

We saw no ice that would have much impeded a ship, except between Sir
George Clerk's Island and Cape Bexley, where it was heavy and closely
packed. The appearance, however, of lanes of open water towards
Wollaston Land, opposite to Cape Bexley, induced us to think that there
might be a good passage for a ship on the outside of the ice, which
lined the south shore, and which seems to have been packed into the
indentations of the coast by the strong north-west winds that had
prevailed for some days. A ship would find shelter amongst the islands
of George the Fourth's Coronation Gulf, in Back's Inlet, in Darnley Bay,
and amongst Booth's Islands, lying off Cape Parry; but the bottom, at
the latter place, is rocky, and there are many sunken rocks along the
whole of that coast. To the westward of Cape Parry, we saw no ship
harbours, and the many sand-banks skirting the outlets of Esquimaux
Lake would render it dangerous for a ship to approach the shore in that
quarter. There is such an abundance of drift-timber on almost every part
of the coast, that a sufficient supply of fuel for a ship might easily
be collected, and wherever we landed on the main shore we found streams
or small lakes of fresh water. Should the course of events ever
introduce a steam-vessel into those seas, it may be important to know
that in coasting the shores between Cape Bathurst and the Mackenzie,
fire-wood sufficient for her daily consumption may be gathered, and that
near the Babbage River, to the westward of the Mackenzie, a tertiary
pitch-coal exists of excellent quality, which Captain Franklin describes
as forming extensive beds.

The height to which the drift-timber is thrown up on the shores at the
western entrance of the Dolphin and Union Straits is, I think, an
indication of an occasional great rise in the sea, which, as the tides
are in comparison so insignificant, I can ascribe only to the north-west
winds driving the waters of an open sea towards the funnel-shaped
entrance of the straits. If this view is correct, Wollaston Land
probably extends far to the north, and closely adjoins to Banks' Land,
or is connected with it. Captain Parry found the strait between Melville
Island and Banks' Land obstructed by ice, and this will naturally be
generally the case, both there and in the Dolphin and Union Straits, if
they form the principal openings through a range of extensive islands,
which run north and s