rowed out of the inlet, we landed at six P.M. in a little bay just outside of the last night’s sleeping-place, pitching the tents on a fine shingly beach, which was the kind of ground we usually looked out for towards the conclusion of the day, as affording the softest bed, consistently with dryness, that nature supplies in this country.  Of such a convenience the men were not sorry to avail themselves, having rowed above thirty miles since the morning.

The boats were launched at daylight on the 8th, and we soon came to a much more promising opening on the same shore, about a mile wide at the entrance, and leading directly to the westward.  After rowing four miles in that direction, we arrived at the mouth of a bay from three to five miles wide, out of which there did not appear the least chance of discovering an outlet.  As nothing, however, but rowing round the bay would satisfactorily determine this, we were proceeding to do so, when we observed in the northern corner something like a low point overlapping the high land at the back.  Towards this spot we steered, as the readiest way of completing the circuit of the bay, and half a mile short of it landed to breakfast.

In the mean time I sent Mr. Ross to one hill, and ascended another myself, expecting to save the time and trouble of rowing into the nook.  I was not a little astonished to find, from my own and Mr. Ross’s observations, that there was on the other side of the point a broad and apparently navigable channel, through which the tide was setting to the northward, at the rate of three or four miles an hour.  I am thus minute in the discovery of this channel, which afterward promised to be of no small importance, to show how nearly such a place may be approached without the slightest suspicion being entertained of its existence, and the consequent necessity of close examination wherever a passage is to be sought for.

We continued our examination, and I despatched Mr. Sherer to the ships for a fresh supply of provisions.  On his return on the 10th we proceeded to the westward.  In running along the coast with a fresh and favourable breeze, we observed three persons standing on a hill, and, as we continued our course, they followed us at full speed along the rocks.  Having sailed into a small sheltered bay, I went up, accompanied by Mr. Bushnan, to meet them on the hills above us.  In sailing along the shore we had heard them call out loudly to us, and observed them frequently lift something which they held in their hands; but, on coming up to them, they remained so perfectly mute and motionless, that, accustomed as we had been to the noisy importunities of their more sophisticated brethren, we could scarcely believe them to be Esquimaux.  There was, besides, a degree of lankness in the faces of the two men, the very reverse of the plump, round, oily cheeks of those we had before seen.  Their countenances at the time impressed me with the idea of Indian rather than