this navigation is liable, and which render it so precarious and uncertain, a piece of loose ice, which lay between the two ships, was drawn after the Griper by the eddy produced by her motion, and completely blocked the narrow passage through which we were about to follow.  Before we could remove this obstruction by hauling it back out of the channel, the floes were again pressed together, wedging it firmly and immovably between them:  the saws were immediately set to work, and used with great effect; but it was not till eleven o’clock that we succeeded, after seven hours’ labour, in getting the Hecla into the lanes of clear water which opened more and more to the westward.

On the 29th we had so much clear water, that the ships had a very perceptible pitching motion, which, from the closeness of the ice, does not very often occur in the Polar regions, and which is therefore hailed with pleasure as an indication of an open sea.  At five P.M. the swell increased considerably, and, as the wind freshened up from the northeast, the ice gradually disappeared; so that by six o’clock we were sailing in an open sea, perfectly free from obstruction of any kind.

We now seemed all at once to have got into the headquarters of the whales.  They were so numerous that I directed the number to be counted during each watch, and no less than eighty-two are mentioned in this day’s log.  Mr. Allison, the Greenland master, considered them generally as large ones, and remarked that a fleet of whalers might easily have obtained a cargo here in a few days.  In the afternoon the wind broke us of from the N.N.W., which obliged us to cast off the Griper, and we carried all sail ahead to make the land.  We saw it at half past five P.M., being the high land about Possession Bay, and at the same time several streams of loose but heavy ice came in sight, which a fresh breeze was drifting fast to the southeastward.

The wind increased to a fresh breeze on the morning of the 31st, which prevented our making much way to the westward.  We stood in towards Cape Byam Martin, and sounded in eighty fathoms on a rocky bottom, at the distance of two miles in an east direction from it.  We soon after discovered the flagstaff which had been erected on Possession Mount on the former expedition; an object which, though insignificant in itself, called up every person immediately on deck to look at and to greet it as an old acquaintance.

The land immediately at the hack of Possession Bay rises in a gentle slope from the sea, presenting an open and extensive space of low ground, flanked by hills to the north and south.  In this valley, and even on the hills, to the height of six or seven hundred feet above the sea, there was scarcely any snow, but the mountains at the back were completely covered with it.  Some pieces of birch-bark having been picked up in the bed of this stream in 1818, which gave reason to suppose that wood might be found growing in the interior, I directed Mr. Fisher to walk up it, accompanied by a small party, and to occupy an hour or two while the Griper was coming up, and Captain Sabine and myself were employed upon the beach, in examining the nature and productions of the country.