unusually heavy floes, closed in with the land a little to the westward of Cape Hay, and our channel of clear water between the ice and the land gradually diminished in breadth, till at length it became necessary to take in the studding sails, and to haul to the wind to look about us.  I immediately left the ship, and went in a boat to examine the grounded ice off a small point of land, such as always occurs on this coast at the outlet of each ravine.  I found that this point offered the only possible shelter which could be obtained in case of the ice coming in; and I therefore determined to take the Hecla in-shore immediately, and to pick out the best berth which circumstances would admit.  As I was returning on board with this intention, I found that the ice was already rapidly approaching the shore; no time was to be lost, therefore, in getting the Hecla to her intended station, which was effected by half past eight P.M., being in nine to seven fathoms water, at the distance of twenty yards from the beach, which was lined all round the point with very heavy masses of ice that had been forced by some tremendous pressure into the ground.  Our situation was a dangerous one, having no shelter from ice coming from the westward, the whole of which, being distant from us less than half a mile, was composed of floes infinitely more heavy than any we had elsewhere met with during the voyage.  The Griper was three or four miles astern of us at the time when the ice began to close, and I therefore directed Lieutenant Liddon, by signal, to secure his ship in the best manner he could, without attempting to join the Hecla; he accordingly made her fast at eleven P.M., near a point like that at which we were lying, and two or three miles to the eastward.

On the whole of this steep coast, wherever we approached the shore, we found a thick stratum of blue and solid ice, firmly imbedded in the beach, at the depth of from six to ten feet under the surface of the water.  This ice has probably been the lower part of heavy masses forced aground by the pressure of the floes from without, and still adhering to the viscous mud of which the beach is composed, after the upper part has, in course of time, dissolved.  From the tops of the hills in this part of Melville Island a continuous line of this submarine ice could be distinctly traced for miles along the coast.

In running along the shore this evening we had noticed near the sea what at a distance had every appearance of a high wall artificially built, which was the resort of numerous birds.  Captain Sabine being desirous to examine it, as well as to procure some specimens of the birds, set out, as soon as we anchored, for that purpose.  The wall proved to be composed of sandstone in horizontal strata, from twenty to thirty feet in height, which had been left standing, so as to exhibit its present artificial appearance, by the decomposition of the rock and earth about it.  Large flocks of glaucous gulls had chosen this as a secure retreat from the foxes, and every other enemy but man; and when our people first went into the ravine in which it stands, they were so fierce in defence of their young that it was scarcely safe to approach them till a few shots had been fired.