and rugged character as the rest of this numerous group, and by far the largest of them all.  To prevent the necessity of reverting to this subject, I may at once add, that two or three months after this, on laying before Ewerat our own chart of the whole coast, in order to obtain the Esquimaux names, we discovered that the island just mentioned was called Khemig, by which name Ormond Island was also distinguished; the word expressing, in the Esquimaux language, anything stopping up the mouth of a place or narrowing its entrance, and applied also more familiarly to the cork of a bottle, or a plug of any kind.  And thus were reconciled all the apparent inconsistencies respecting this hitherto mysterious and incomprehensible word, which had occasioned us so much perplexity.

At daylight on the 27th we crossed to a small island at the margin of the ice; and leaving the boat there in charge of the coxswain and two of the crew, Mr. Ross and myself, accompanied by the other two, set out across the ice at seven A.M. to gain the main land, with the intention of determining the extent of the inlet by walking up its southern bank.  After an hour’s good travelling, we landed at eight A.M., and had scarcely done so when we found ourselves at the very entrance, being exactly opposite the place from which Mr. Richards and myself had obtained the first view of the inlet.  The patch of ice on which we had been walking, and which was about three miles long, proved the only remains of last year’s formation; so forcibly had nature struggled to get rid of this before the commencement of a fresh winter.

Walking quickly to the westward along this shore, which afforded excellent travelling, we soon perceived that our business was at an end, the inlet terminating a very short distance beyond where I had first traced it, the apparent turn to the northward being only that of a shallow bay.

Having thus completed our object, we set out on our return, and reached the boat at three P.M., after a walk of twenty miles.  The weather fortunately remaining extremely mild, no young ice was formed to obstruct our way, and we arrived on board at noon the following day, after an examination peculiarly satisfactory, inasmuch as it proved the non-existence of any water communication with the Polar Sea, however small and unfit for the navigation of ships, to the southward of the Strait of the Fury and Hecla.

I found from Captain Lyon on my return, that, in consequence of some ice coming in near the ships, he had shifted them round the point into the berths-where it was my intention to place them during the winter; where they now lay in from eleven to fourteen fathoms, at the distance of three cables’ length from the shore.