In this operation, the shelving base of an iceberg,
which had formed under the cliff, and still adhered to it, but which was
undermined by the waves, gave way whilst several of the men were
standing upon it; but, fortunately, it did not overset, and they
received no injury, as it was large enough to support them in the water.
At nine o'clock, A.M., we were stopped by the closeness of the ice, and
put ashore until the tide or wind should produce some change.

The tides, since leaving the Mackenzie, had never been observed to have
a greater rise than eighteen inches: but in the neighbourhood of our
encampment, the sea-wrack and lines of drift timber indicated a washing
of the sea to the perpendicular height of twenty feet. The country in
this vicinity consists of a bluish limestone, interstratified with
slate-clay: and naked and rugged ridges of trap rocks rise in various
places above the general level. The soil is composed of clay and
limestone gravel. The latitude of our encampment was ascertained, by
meridian observation, to be 69 degrees 29 minutes N.; its longitude was
120 degrees 20 minutes W.; and its distance from Roscoe River was
twenty-five miles.

[Sidenote: Sunday, 30th.] A breeze of wind from the land having opened a
passage two miles wide, we embarked at two o'clock in the morning of the
30th, and ran seven miles under sail; when, having overtaken the ice
which had passed in the night, we found it too closely packed to allow
us to proceed. In making for the beach, the Union narrowly escaped being
crushed by two large floes of ice, which came together with violence
just as she was about to run betwixt them. The Dolphin had sailed
through the same passage not two minutes before. From an eminence near
our encampment, we had the unpleasant view of a sea covered, as far as
the eye could reach, with ice, excepting a few lanes of open water far
to seaward. The tide fell here seven inches in the morning, and eleven
in the evening, although the north-west wind increased in the afternoon
to a pretty strong gale. The greater fall of the water with that wind,
showing that it found an exit to the eastward, relieved us from an
apprehension, which we had begun to entertain, that we were entering a
deep bay, which might be encumbered by the drift-ice for many days. Much
ice drove past us in the course of the day, before a west-north-west
wind, its progress being only slightly checked for a time by the flood
tide. Recent f