I named this
cape after Mr. Barrow of the Admiralty to whose exertions are mainly
owing the discoveries recently made in Arctic geography. An opening on
its eastern side received the appellation of Inman Harbour after my
friend the Professor at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, and to a
group of islands to seaward of it we gave the name of Jameson in honour
of the distinguished Professor of Mineralogy at Edinburgh.
We had much wind and rain during the night and by the morning of the 26th
a great deal of ice had drifted into the inlet. We embarked at four and
attempted to force a passage, when the first canoe got enclosed and
remained for some time in a very perilous situation: the pieces of ice,
crowded together by the action of the current and wind, pressing strongly
against its feeble sides. A partial opening however occurring we landed
without having sustained any serious injury. Two men were then sent round
the bay and it was ascertained that, instead of having entered a narrow
passage between an island and the main, we were at the mouth of a harbour
having an island at its entrance, and that it was necessary to return by
the way we came and get round a point to the northward. This was however
impracticable, the channel being blocked up by drift ice, and we had no
prospect of release except by a change of wind. This detention was
extremely vexatious as we were losing a fair wind and expending our
provision. In the afternoon the weather cleared up and several men went
hunting but were unsuccessful. During the day the ice floated backwards
and forwards in the harbour, moved by currents not regular enough to
deserve the name of tide, and which appeared to be governed by the wind.
We perceived great diminution by melting in the pieces near us. That none
of this ice survives the summer is evident from the rapidity of its decay
and because no ice of last year's formation was hanging on the rocks.
Whether any body of it exists at a distance from the shore we could not
determine.
The land around Cape Barrow and to Detention Harbour consists of steep
craggy mountains of granite rising so abruptly from the water's edge as
to admit few landing-places even for a canoe. The higher parts attain an
elevation of fourteen or fifteen hundred feet and the whole is entirely
destitute of vegetation.
On the morning of the 27th, the ice remaining stationary at the entrance,
we went to the bottom of the harbour and carried the canoes and cargoes
about a mile and a half across the point of land that forms the east side
of it, but the ice was not more favourable there for our advancement than
at the place we had left.
