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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. It was not till the afternoon of the 30th that the whole was completed, and the Fury placed in the best berth for the winter that circumstances would permit. An early release in the spring could here be scarcely expected, nor, indeed, did the nature of the ice about us, independently of situation, allow us to hope for it; but both these unfavourable circumstances had been brought about by a contingency which no human power or judgment could have obviated, and at which, therefore, it would have been unreasonable, as well as useless, to repine. We lay here in rather less than five fathoms, on a muddy bottom, at the distance of one cable's length from the eastern shore of the bay. The whole length of the canal we had sawed through was
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