Esquimaux set them up to guide them in travelling from place to place, when a covering of snow renders it difficult to distinguish one spot from another.  We found among the stones some seals’ bones, with the flesh still upon them, which seemed to indicate that the natives had occupied this station during a part of the same season and judging from the number of circles collected in this place, and still more from our subsequent knowledge of these people, it is probable that 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 been applied.