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. It consisted of small pieces closely packed
together by the wind extending along the shore but leaving a clear
passage beyond the chain of islands with which the whole of this coast is
girt.
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