The wind died away on the morning of the 1st of September, and the fog was succeeded by snow and sleet, which still rendered the atmosphere extremely thick.  At a quarter before four A.M., I was informed by the officer of the watch that a breeze had sprung up, and that there was very little ice near the ships.  Anxious to take advantage of these favourable circumstances, I directed all sail to be made to the westward:  there was no difficulty in complying with the first part of this order; but to ascertain which way the wind was blowing, and to which quarter of the horizon the ship’s head was to be directed, was a matter of no such easy accomplishment; nor could we devise any means of determining this question till five o’clock, when we obtained a sight of the sun through the fog, and were thus enabled to shape our course, the wind being moderate from the northward.

At one A.M. on the 2d, a star was seen, being the first that had been visible to us for more than two months.

As we were making no way to the westward, I left the ship, accompanied by a large party of officers and men, and was soon after joined by the Griper’s boats.  The basis of this land is sandstone; but we met with limestone also, occurring in loose pieces on the surface, and several lumps of coal were brought in by the parties who had traversed the island in different directions.  Our sportsmen were by no means successful, having seen only two deer, which were too wild to allow them to get near them.  The dung of these animals, however, as well as that of the musk-ox, was very abundant, especially in those places where the moss was most luxuriant; every here and there we came to a spot of this kind, consisting of one or two acres of ground, covered with a rich vegetation, which was evidently the feeding-place of those animals, there being quantities of their hair and wool lying scattered about.  Several heads of the musk-ox were picked up, and one of the Hecla’s seamen brought to the boat a narwhal’s horn, which he found on a hill more than a mile from the sea, and which must have been carried thither by Esquimaux or by bears:  three or four brace of ptarmigan were killed, and these were the only supply of this kind which we obtained.  We found no indication of this part of the island having been inhabited, unless the narwhal’s horn be considered as such.

The wind continued light and variable till half past eight A.M. on the 3d, when a breeze from the northward once more enabled us to make some progress.  I was the more anxious to do so from having perceived that the main ice had, for the last twenty-four hours, been gradually, though slowly, closing on the shore, thereby contracting the scarcely navigable channel in which we were sailing.  The land which formed our western extreme was a low point, five miles to the westward of our place of observation the preceding day, which I named Point Ross, and the ice had already approached this point so much that there was considerable