ing it appeared to be by
keeping close to the shore, although under the disadvantage of trebling
the distance. The coast in this quarter is similar to that which we had
passed on the two or three preceding days, and is formed of high
limestone cliffs, with intervening shingly beaches; but the country is
still more barren, the quantity of limestone debris almost excluding any
soil. Flat limestone rocks, having only a few inches of water upon them,
skirt the beach, and terminate like a wall in four or five fathoms
water. The ice was closely packed against these rocks, and for five
miles after passing Cape Young, we made a way for the boats only by the
constant use of the hatchet and ice-chisel, and gladly encamped at six
o'clock in the evening, after a day's voyage of thirty-one miles. A herd
of twenty rein-deer were grazing on the beach, but our hunters were too
much fatigued to go in pursuit of them. The encampment was situated in
latitude 68 degrees 53 minutes N., and longitude 116 degrees 50 minutes
W. The temperature varied in the course of the day from 34 degrees to 50
degrees. We observed that the ice continued to dissolve, but not so
rapidly as in the month of July, when the sun did not sink below the
horizon.

[Sidenote: Thursday, 3rd.] We resumed our operations on the morning of
the 3d at the usual hour, and with great labour made a passage for the
boats. At eleven o'clock we landed to refresh ourselves on a projecting
point at the western entrance of a deep bay, having previously passed a
river which was about one hundred yards wide, but very shallow. After
breakfasting, and obtaining a meridian observation in latitude 68
degrees 53 minutes N., we pushed off again, and for some time made very
slow progress. The shores of the bay consisted of beds of limestone,
which, shelving into the water, were covered with masses of ice, forced
up by the pressure of the pack outside. We were, therefore, compelled to
work our way in deeper water, and there the boats, which led by turns,
were occasionally exposed to the hazard of being overset by pieces of
buoyant ice, which frequently broke off from the bases of the floes. In
the language of the whalers, the ice is said to _calf_, when masses are
detached in this manner, and they are sometimes of sufficient magnitude
in the Greenland seas to endanger large vessels. The Dolphin was, at one
time, nearly crushed to pieces by the closing of two floes; but,
fortunately, she had re